WPA and WEP difference

[faye]

I know WPA is newer and is for the future 802.11i
and what else?

my notebook and my pc is haven't network problem these days, so i may need to change the security method to what happen.

what do i need to set it up?

 

[nweaver]

nice long sig.....


WPA is a better encryption schema, WEP can be cracked very very quickly, with easy to use tools, and little knowledge. WPA is much harder, and lacks the scriptkiddie type tools. WPA2 is even better.

 

[orion23]

Forget WEP and go with WPA (WPA 2 if available)

For the setup, you need to make sure that both your router and the wireless card support WPA, then just thing of a nice long group of words which will be your access key / password!

 

[JackMDS]

This page has a rather humble explaination, WEP, WPA, and WPA2

:sun:

 

[aLeoN]

Won't higher levels of encryption/security lead to slower performance? Or does that safety outweigh the loss?

 

[nweaver]

unless you have craptastic hardware, that is pretty much a myth

 

[InlineFive]

AFAIK, most current devices have real-time, hardware RC4 and AES cryptographic processors.

 

[Nothinman]

unless you have craptastic hardware, that is pretty much a myth

Not true, the overhead can be noticable even on decent hardware. Transfer a file via ethernet with scp and ftp, I bet no matter how fast your machine is you'll notice a difference. We're not just dealing with CPU time, encrypting the packets means there's slightly less room for data so you end up with more packets to complete the same transaction. You can compress the data too but even with a fast compression algorithm like gzip or lzf you'll be using more CPU time to keep up.

 

[nweaver]

I have done (significant) testing doing the same ftp script (Get a 20 meg file, put the same file back with a new name, get the new name file, fc the original and new) with Open/None, Open/Wep64, Open/Wep128, LEAP/CCKM (similar to WPA) and found almost no difference (even sometimes faster with encryption). This is in a controlled enviorment (Wireless cage, with AP's in enclosuers and external antenna)

 

[Nothinman]

I was mainly speaking about WPA2 which will use AES encryption, current WEP only uses RC4.

 

[nweaver]

I would have to go back and look at the old test plan (don't do too many 2.0 tests these days) but we might even do WPA (TKIP Encryption)

 

[Nothinman]

TKIP still uses RC4, it just changes the key for every 10,000 packets.

 

[Genx87]

If your wireless node has the ability to do AES encryption is it significantly better than TKIP?

 

[faye]

i totally don't understand and don't have a concept how to set this up.

I don't even know if my wireless router will support this feature..