walled garden
A restricted subset of
network content that wireless devices can access.
WEP
Wired Equivalent
Privacy. A security protocol for wireless local area networks (WLANs) defined in the 802.11b
standard. 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.
WINS
Windows Internet Naming
Service. A system that determines the IP address associated with a particular network
computer, called name resolution. WINS supports network client and server computers running
Windows and can provide name resolution for other computers with special arrangements. WINS
supports dynamic addressing (
DHCP) by maintaining a
distributed database that is automatically updated with the names of computers currently
available and the IP address assigned to each one.
DNS is an alternative system for name
resolution suitable for network computers with fixed IP addresses.
WLAN
Wireless Local Area Network.
WMM
Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM),
a Wi-Fi Alliance certified standard that provides multimedia enhancements for Wi-Fi networks
that improve the user experience for audio, video, and voice applications. This standard is
compliant with the IEEE 802.11e
Quality of Service extensions for 802.11 networks. WMM provides prioritized media access by
shortening the time between transmitting packets for higher priority traffic. WMM is based on
the Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) method.
WPA
Wireless Protected
Access, or Wi-Fi Protected Access is a security solution adopted by the Wi-Fi Alliance that
adds authentication to WEP's basic encryption. For authentication, WPA specifies IEEE 802.1x
authentication with Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP). For encryption, WPA uses the
Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) mechanism, which shares a starting key between devices,
and then changes their encryption key for every packet.
Certificate Authentication (CA) can also be used. Also part of
the encryption mechanism are 802.1x for dynamic key distribution and Message Integrity Check
(MIC) a.k.a. Michael.
WPA requires that all computers and devices have WPA
software.
WPA-PSK
Wi-Fi Protected Access
with Pre-Shared Key, a special mode of WPA for users without an enterprise authentication
server. Instead, for authentication, a Pre-Shared Key is used. The PSK is a shared secret
(passphrase) that must be entered in both the AP or router and the WPA clients.
This
pre-shared key should be a random sequence of characters at least 20 characters long or
hexadecimal digits (numbers 0-9 and letters A-F) at least 24 hexadecimal digits long. After
the initial shared secret, the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) handles the encryption
and automatic re-keying.