ZyXEL M-302 User Guide - Page 75

M-302 User's Guide 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 29 Comparison of EAP Authentication Types Mutual Authentication Certificate - Client Certificate - Server Dynamic Key Exchange Credential Integrity Deployment Difficulty Client Identity Protection EAP-MD5 No No No No None Easy No EAP-TLS Yes Yes Yes Yes Strong Hard No EAP-TTLS Yes Optional Yes Yes Strong Moderate Yes PEAP Yes Optional Yes Yes Strong Moderate Yes LEAP Yes No No Yes Moderate Moderate No WPA Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) is a subset of the IEEE 802.11i standard. Key differences between WPA and WEP are improved data encryption and user authentication. Select WEP only when the AP and/or wireless clients do not support WPA. WEP is less secure than WPA. Encryption WPA improves data encryption by using Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP), Message Integrity Check (MIC) and IEEE 802.1x. WPA uses Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) in the Counter mode with Cipher block chaining Message authentication code Protocol (CCMP) to offer stronger encryption than TKIP. 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 regularly changes 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 encrypt every data packet that is wirelessly communicated between the AP and the wireless stations. This all happens in the background automatically. Appendix C 75