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Introduction To Wireless Administration Tutorials

Wireless Standards & Topologies / 802.11i

Subtitles of the Movie

Now, the next 802.11 standard that we'll talk about is not a wireless standard per say, like A, B and G and N that we've talked about, but it's a security standard for wireless networks. Now, without going into a lot of great detail right now because we're going to talk about security protocols with wireless networks a little bit later in the course, let's tell you now that the 802.11I basically is an implementation of WPA2; the Wi-Fi Protective Access, second version. The wired, encrypt, wired equivalency protocol was the 802.11 security standard that was introduced with the B standard and it was OK but there was some inherent weaknesses that we'll discuss later. WPA came out and sought to form a bridge between the WEP standards and the WPA2 standards, the 802.11I standard that exists today. The WAP was kind of a stop-gap measure. 802.11 I standard isWPA2, was ratified in June 2004. And again, it seeks to replace WEP as the 802.11 wireless security standard. Now, it was developed to address several weaknesses of the wired equivalency protocol such as a small initialization vector, which is only 24 bits. Repetition of keys and a very weak encryption algorithm. RC4. It uses the advanced encryption standard as it's block cipher. It's used to encrypt keys and it uses a 48 bit initialization vector, twice as much as what WEP used. It can also use 802.1X, protocols for authentication and key distribution. I know that some of that may be a little bit fuzzy right now, but we'll talk about that a little bit later when we talk about wireless security. Now, one thing you need to know about 802.11I, it's supported by most major operating systems, if they have the latest patches applied, such as Windows XP Service Pack Two, the new Vista supports, uh, 802.11I. Linux supports it and some MACs do. Again, WPA2 is kind of a newer standard, so you may have to apply a patch to some other OSs to get that support. Another thing you ought to know is not all the current equipment that's sold supports WPA2. More than likely, if it was made in the past year or so, it generally does support it but the older devices might not. Some may allow you to use it if you get firmware updates and some may not allow you to use it at all. Again, we're going to talk about things like WEP, WPA and WPA2 later on in the course when we talk about wireless security.

Tutorial Information

Title: Introduction To Wireless Administration
Author: Bobby Rogers
SKU: 33800
ISBN: 1-934743-11-9
Release Date: 2007-09-26
Duration: 4.5 hrs / 77 lessons
Captions: For Online University members only
Compatibility: Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux
QuickTime 7, Flash 8

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