Table 32 Comparison Of Eap Authentication Types; Wpa And Wpa2 - ZyXEL Communications 802.11a/g Wireless CardBus Card ZyXEL AG-120 User Manual

For added security, certificate-based authentications (EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS and PEAP) use
dynamic keys for data encryption. They are often deployed in corporate environments, but for
public deployment, a simple user name and password pair is more practical. The following
table is a comparison of the features of authentication types.

Table 32 Comparison of EAP Authentication Types

Mutual Authentication
Certificate – Client
Certificate – Server
Dynamic Key Exchange
Credential Integrity
Deployment Difficulty
Client Identity Protection

WPA and 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(2) 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.
Encryption
Both WPA and WPA2 improve data encryption by using Temporal Key Integrity Protocol
(TKIP), Message Integrity Check (MIC) and IEEE 802.1x. WPA and WPA2 use Advanced
Encryption Standard (AES) in the Counter mode with Cipher block chaining Message
authentication code Protocol (CCMP) to offer stronger encryption than TKIP.
Appendix D Wireless Security
EAP-MD5 EAP-TLS
No Yes
No Yes
No Yes
No Yes
None Strong
Easy Hard
No No
ZyXEL AG-120 User's Guide
EAP-TTLS PEAP
Yes Yes
Optional Optional
Yes Yes
Yes Yes
Strong Strong
Moderate Moderate
Yes Yes
LEAP
Yes
No
No
Yes
Moderate
Moderate
No
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