Wi-Fi Standard 802.11i Finalized

[Barry]

Wi-Fi is quickly becoming a standard feature on many PDAs and will soon be found in a number of upcoming smartphones.
The IEEE ratified the 802.11i security standard for wireless LANs. 802.11i is the security standard for Wi-Fi networks that upgrades the former "official" wireless security standard. WEP was found to be easy to crack by those with the right tools and enough patience -- and so hard to implement that most people don't bother turning on the security at all.

Official 802.11i has all the abilities of WPA and adds the requirement to use Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for encryption of data. AES provides enough security to meet the needs for the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 specification, which is required by many government agencies. The downside is that AES support may require new hardware for many existing WLANs, as it needs a dedicated chip to handle the encryption and decryption. However, as the popularity of Wi-Fi and handheld devices increases, those without the security features are either out of date or will be considered inferior.

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