Corinex Global ETS 300-826 - Manual (Page 38)

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Glossary
Corinex Wireless G USB Mini Adapter
Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)
The Wi-Fi Alliance put together WPA as a data encryption method for 802.11 wire-
less LANs. WPA is an industry-supported, pre-standard version of 802.11i, utilizing
the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP), which fixes the problems of WEP, in-
cluding using dynamic keys.
Wide Area Network (WAN)
A WAN consists of multiple LANs that are tied together via telephone services and/
or fiberoptic cabling. WANs may span a city, a state, a country, or even the world.
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)
Now widely recognized as flawed, WEP is a data encryption method used to protect
the transmission between 802.11 wireless clients and APs. However, it uses the
same key among all communicating devices. WEP’s problems are well-known, in-
cluding an insufficient key length and no automated method for distributing the keys.
WEP can be easily cracked in a couple of hours with off-the-shelf tools.
Wireless LAN (WLAN)
A wireless LAN does not use cable to transmit signals, but rather uses radio or
infrared to transmit packets through the air. Radio Frequency (RF) and infrared are
commonly used types of wireless transmission. Most wireless LANs use spread
spectrum technology. It offers limited bandwidth, usually under 11Mbps, and users
share the bandwidth with other devices in the spectrum; however, users can oper-
ate a spread spectrum device without licensing from.