[clue-tech] WEP/WPA depend on wireless card?

[Jim Ockers]

June Tate-Gans wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 8:45 AM, Jim Ockers <ockers at ockers.net> wrote:
>   
>> Hi Adrian,
>>
>> I think the WPA support depends only on the device driver for the
>> wireless network hardware. That is the only hardware-specific thing to
>> worry about. I would think probably most of the WLAN device drivers in
>> Kubuntu 9.04 support WPA.
>>
>> Good luck,
>> Jim
>>     
>
> Actually, there is a chunk of the WPA implementation that must reside
> in the radio as well. As a for-instance, I cannot do WPA with the pair
> of Orinoco Gold and Silver wireless cards that I have because the
> hardware just doesn't support it (one supports WEP30 only and the
> other WEP30/128). For reference, those cards are pretty old -- they're
> from around the '90s or so -- but the point is still valid.
>   
The Orinoco is a good example of WLAN radios in which the hardware does 
not support WPA. Proxim's white paper on WPA says "To enable WPA on 
ORiNOCO Access Points, the radio hardware must meet certain minimum 
requirements. Unfortunately, the AP-2000 configured with an ORiNOCO 
802.11b PC card cannot
support WPA." 
http://www.proxim.com/learn/library/whitepapers/WPA_White_Paper.pdf

However I would think that anything made the last 10 years or so would 
probably have the capabilities to support WPA. (This might be especially 
true now in the days of software radios, where the radio hardware has 
essentially limitless capabilities - limited only by the baseband, I think).

-- 
Jim Ockers, P.Eng. (ockers at ockers.net)
Contact info: http://www.ockers.ca/pason.html


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