D-Link DWS-4026 Product Manual - Page 431

Software User Manual 12/10/09 D-Link Unified Access System Configuring AP Security The Default AP profile does not use any security mechanism by default. In order to protect your network, D-Link strongly recommends that you select a security mechanism so that unauthorized wireless clients cannot gain access to your network. From the VAP tab of the Wireless Network Configuration page, you can select None, WEP or WPA/WPA2 as the WLAN security mechanisms, as the following figure shows. The default is None. Figure 297: AP Network Security Options The following sections describe the security mechanicians. Using No Security If you select None as your security mode, no further options are configurable on the AP. This mode means that any data transferred between the AP and the associated wireless clients is not encrypted, and any wireless client can associate with the AP. This security mode can be useful during initial network configuration or for problem solving, but it is not recommended for regular use on the internal network because it is not secure. Using Static or Dynamic WEP Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is a data encryption protocol for 802.11 wireless networks. If you select this security mechanism, all wireless clients and access points on the network are configured with a 64-bit (40-bit secret key + 24-bit initialization vector (IV)) or 128-bit (104-bit secret key + 24-bit IV) Shared Key for data encryption. Static WEP is not the most secure mode available, but it offers more protection than setting the security mode to None as it does prevent an outsider from easily sniffing out unencrypted wireless traffic. Dynamic WEP is more secure than Static WEP, but you need a RADIUS server to manage the dynamically generated keys. WEP encrypts data moving across the wireless network based on a static key. (The encryption algorithm is a stream cipher called RC4.) Document 34CSFP6XXUWS-SWUM100-D7 Basic Setup Page 431