WPA2 - is it implemented in hardware or software (or both)?

Dan Williams dcbw at redhat.com
Fri Oct 27 13:48:58 EDT 2006


On Fri, 2006-10-27 at 16:44 +0200, Svein Olav Bjerkeset wrote:
> >> Ok - but is it enough that the driver (madwifi in my case) supports WPA2
> >> or will the hardware itself need WPA2 support as well?
> >
> > Both, but I believe that any card which can be used with the madwifi
> > drivers will also support WPA.
> >
> > Dan
> >
> 
> Yes, I have WPA working, but not WPA2 - are you saying that any card using
> the madwifi driver should support WPA2 as well?

Ah, no, that's a different question, sorry.  WPA2 requires different
hardware than plain WPA.  WPA2-capable cards are required to support
CCMP/AES encryption, which requires either updates silicon, or a
softmac-like driver coupled with really shallow silicon.

So it's not a given that any card which supports WPA can actually
support WPA2.  You'll need to find out if the card supports WPA2 first
through either product marketing information, or possibly using it on
Windows and trying WPA2.

Dan

> Svein Olav
> 




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