Wep (Wired Equivalent Privacy); All Contents Copyright (C) 2005 Zyxel Communications Corporation - ZyXEL Communications P-2608HWL-D1 Support Notes

P-2608HWL Series Support Notes

WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)

Introduction
The IEEE 802.11 standard set out the communication protocols for wireless LANs.
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) data encryption protects wireless communication from eavesdropping,
because wireless transmission is easier to intercept than transmission over wired networks, and a wireless
network is a shared medium on which data can be intercepted by anyone on the same network.
WEP relies on a secret key that is shared between a wireless client (for example,. a laptop with a wireless
Ethernet card) and an access point (such as a base station). The secret key is used to encrypt packets
before they are transmitted, and an integrity check is used to ensure that the packages are not modified
during transition. The standard does not discuss how the shared key is established. In practice, most
implementations use a single key that is shared between all wireless clients and access points.
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All contents copyright (c) 2005 ZyXEL Communications Corporation.