D-Link DWR-978 Product Manual - Page 84

Appendix B - Networking Basics Wireless Security This section will show you the different levels of security you can use to help protect your data from intruders. The DWR-978 offers the following types of security: • WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) • WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) • WPA2-PSK (Pre-Shared Key) • WPA-PSK (Pre-Shared Key) What is WPA? WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access), is a Wi-Fi standard that was designed to improve the security features of WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy). The 2 major improvements over WEP: • Improved data encryption through the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP). TKIP scrambles the keys using a hashing algorithm and by adding an integrity-checking feature. WPA2 is based on 802.11i and uses Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) instead of TKIP. • User authentication, which is generally missing in WEP, which is encorporated through the extensible authentication protocol (EAP). WEP regulates access to a wireless network based on a computer's hardware-specific MAC address, which is relatively simple to be sniffed out and stolen. EAP is built on a stronger public-key encryption system so that only authorized network users should be able to access the network. WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK uses a passphrase or key to authenticate your wireless connection. The key is an alpha-numeric password between 8 and 63 characters long. The password can include symbols (!?*&_) and spaces. This key must be the exact same key entered on your wireless router or access point. This is the technique typically used on home networks. WPA/WPA2 incorporates user authentication through the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP). EAP is built on an even stronger key encryption system to make it much more difficult for unauthorized network users to access the network. EAP is often used in corporate or university environments. D-Link DWR-978 User Manual 80