ZyXEL Communications WAP3205 User Manual page 141

simple user name and password pair is more practical. The following table is a comparison of the
features of authentication types.
Table 51 Comparison of EAP Authentication Types
Mutual Authentication
Certificate – Client
Certificate – Server
Dynamic Key Exchange
Credential Integrity
Deployment Difficulty
Client Identity Protection
WPA a nd WPA2
Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) is a subset of the IEEE 802.11i standard. WPA2 (IEEE 802.11i) is a wireless
security standard that defines stronger encryption, authentication and key management than WPA.
Key differences between WPA or WPA2 and WEP are improved data encryption and user
authentication.
If both an AP and the wireless clients support WPA2 and you have an external RADIUS server, use WPA2
for stronger data encryption. If you don't have an external RADIUS server, you should use WPA2-PSK
(WPA2-Pre-Shared Key) that only requires a single (identical) password entered into each access point,
wireless gateway and wireless client. As long as the passwords match, a wireless client will be granted
access to a WLAN.
If the AP or the wireless clients do not support WPA2, just use WPA or WPA-PSK depending on whether
you have an external RADIUS server or not.
Select WEP only when the AP and/or wireless clients do not support WPA or WPA2. WEP is less secure
than WPA or WPA2.
Enc ryptio n
WPA improves data encryption by using Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP), Message Integrity Check
(MIC) and IEEE 802.1x. WPA2 also uses TKIP when required for compatibility reasons, but offers stronger
encryption than TKIP with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) in the Counter mode with Cipher block
chaining Message authentication code Protocol (CCMP).
TKIP uses 128-bit keys that are dynamically generated and distributed by the authentication server. AES
(Advanced Encryption Standard) is a block cipher that uses a 256-bit mathematical algorithm called
Rijndael. They both include a per-packet key mixing function, a Message Integrity Check (MIC) named
Michael, an extended initialization vector (IV) with sequencing rules, and a re-keying mechanism.
WPA and WPA2 regularly change and rotate the encryption keys so that the same encryption key is
never used twice.
The RADIUS server distributes a Pairwise Master Key (PMK) key to the AP that then sets up a key hierarchy
and management system, using the PMK to dynamically generate unique data encryption keys to
Appendix D Wireless LANs
EAP- MD5 EAP- T L S
No Yes
No Yes
No Yes
No Yes
None Strong
Easy Hard
No No
WAP3205 v3 User's Guide
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EAP- T T L S PEAP
Yes Yes
Optional Optional
Yes Yes
Yes Yes
Strong Strong
Moderate Moderate
Yes Yes
L EAP
Yes
No
No
Yes
Moderate
Moderate
No