CCENT (Cisco Certified Entry Network Technician) Certification Exam Notes

I. Wireless concepts

1. Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is a protocol used to secure IEEE 802.11 wireless networks. It is part of the IEEE 802.11 wireless networking standard. Wireless networks broadcast messages using radio, and therefore more susceptible to eavesdropping than wired networks. WEP was intended to provide confidentiality comparable to that of a traditional wired network.

2. Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA and WPA2) is a class of systems to secure wireless (Wi-Fi) computer networks. WPA is forward compatible with the IEEE 802.11i standard, and was intended as an intermediate measure to take the place of WEP while 802.11i was prepared. 802.11i includes dynamic key exchange, stronger encryption, and user authentication. It is not backward compatible with WPA. The 802.11i standard is widely known as WPA2.

3. WPA stands for Wi-Fi Protected Access. The key features of the protocol are given below:

1. It supports both static and dynamic key distribution
2. It provides Device Authentication, as well as User Authentication.
3. It uses TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) encryption for dynamic key exchange. Note that WPA2 uses AES encryption where as WPA uses TKIP. AES encryption is a stronger encryption protocol.
4. WPA is forward compatible with WPA2.

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