Wireless FAQ: Security

4. Answers - 3

• Which is more secure, 64 or 128 bit WEP?

Neither should be considered secure for business use since both can be cracked within a matter of minutes. See the TomsNetworking How to Crack WEP series.

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• If a product is 802.11g spec-compliant or 11g Wi-Fi certified does it include Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) support?

Generally, yes. But you'll need to check the Wi-Fi certification details printed on the product box, or look up the product in the Top

• Is Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) supported in wireless bridges and wireless-to-Ethernet adapters?

Generally not due to the way these products work.

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• Is there a way to improve security above WEP in IBSS (Ad Hoc) mode, since WPA is not supported in that mode?

You could try setting up a VPN tunnel, which would require running a VPN client on one station and VPN gateway/server on the other.

For larger networks, however, this would get impractical since each station would need to run both VPN client and server so that it could initiate or terminate a tunnel to each other station.

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• Does WEP have a negative impact on an 802.11b wireless network throughput?

Older 802.11b products can show a throughput reduction of up to 40 - 50% with either 64 or 128 bit WEP enabled. However, this problem has been pretty much eliminated in current generation 11b products and those using the 802.11a or 11g standards.

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• Is traffic on a Wireless Distribution System (WDS) bridge more secure than other wireless data?

No. Although data in a WDS connection can be WEP encrypted, WDS requires the MAC addresses in each packet's header to be unencrypted.

Also, the current version of Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) does not handle WDS.

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• Do any products support Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) over a WDS bridged connection?

No. In general, you won't find products that support WPA through a WDS-bridged connection. The reason is that WDS uses MAC addresses to communicate, and WPA is designed to encrypt the MAC addresses. [Thnx to Buffalo Technology for their help on this question.]

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