pre-authentication in RSN/WPA2

Jouni Malinen jkmaline at cc.hut.fi
Mon Feb 21 12:44:21 EST 2005


On Mon, Feb 21, 2005 at 06:09:52PM +0100, Ajeet Nankani wrote:

> what i understood by going through old mails on the above issue, that 
> for pre-authentication to work, STA needs to have the new AP in the scan 
> resutls at both times, one when it pre-authenticates with the new AP 
> through the current AP and when it actually associate and do 4 way 
> handshake with new AP, is it true?

Well, in many cases, yes, but this is not really a requirement.
Something needs to trigger the station to believe it should
pre-authenticate with an AP. This may indeed be scan results showing
another AP with pre-authentication enabled; or it could also be report
from the current AP listing potential neighbors. As far as
wpa_supplicant is concerned, scan results would not be needed for either
when ap_scan=2 mode is used, but the driver will most likely have these
results internally even in this case.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA



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