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WEP
(Wired Equivalent Privacy) A security protocol for wireless local area networks (WLANs) defined in the 802.11b
standard. WEP is designed to provide the same level of security as that of a wired LAN. LANs are inherently more
secure than WLANs because LANs are somewhat protected by the physicalities of their structure, having some or all
of the network inside a building that can be protected from unauthorized access. WLANs, which are over radio waves,
do not have the same physical structure and therefore are more vulnerable to tampering. WEP aims to provide security
by encrypting data over radio waves so that it is protected as it is transmitted from one end point to another.
Wi-Fi™
(Wireless Fidelity) Used generically when referring of any type of 802.11 network, whether 802.11b, 802.11a, dual-
band, etc. The term is promulgated by the Wi-Fi Alliance. Any products tested and approved as "Wi-Fi Certified" (a
registered trademark) by the Wi-Fi Alliance are certified as interoperable with each other, even if they are from
different manufacturers. A user with a "Wi-Fi Certified" product can use any brand of access point with any other
brand of client hardware that also is certified. Typically, however, any Wi-Fi product using the same radio frequency
(for example, 2.4GHz for 802.11b or 802.11g, or 5GHz for 802.11a) will work with any other product, even if that
product is not "Wi-Fi Certified."
WLAN
(Wireless Local Area Network) Also referred to as LAWN. A type of local-area network that uses high-frequency radio
waves rather than wires to communicate between nodes. See also, Node.
WMI
(Web Management Interface) The browser-based system administrators interface for all Nomadix Gateways.
WPA
(Wi-Fi™ Protected Access) A
Wi-Fi™
standard that was designed to improve upon the security features of WEP. The
technology is designed to work with existing Wi-Fi products that have been enabled with WEP (as a software upgrade
to existing hardware), but the technology includes two improvements over WEP:
Improved data encryption through the temporal key integrity protocol (TKIP). TKIP scrambles the keys using a
hashing algorithm and, by adding an integrity-checking feature, ensures that the keys haven't been tampered with.
User authentication, which is generally missing in WEP, through the extensible authentication protocol (EAP). WEP
regulates access to a wireless network based on a computer's hardware-specific MAC address, which is relatively
simple to be "sniffed out" and stolen. EAP is built on a more secure public-key encryption system to ensure that only
authorized network users can access the network.
It should be noted that WPA is an interim standard that will be replaced with the IEEE's 802.11i standard upon its
completion.
XML
(eXtensible Markup Language) A specification developed by the W3C. XML is a pared down version of SGML,
designed especially for Web documents. It enables designers to create their own customized tags to provide
functionality not available with HTML. For example, XML supports links that point to multiple documents, as
opposed to HTML links, which can reference just one destination each. For all Nomadix Gateways, XML is used by
the subscriber management module for port location and user administration. Enabling the XML interface allows your
Nomadix Gateway to accept and process XML commands from an external source. XML commands are appended to a
URL in the form of an encoded query string. Nomadix Gateways parse the query string, executes the commands
specified by the string, and return data to the system that initiated the command request. See also, HTML, TCP, and
W3C.
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