Wireless Security: WEP vs WPA
Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), the latest security standard for wireless networking, increases the level of data protection and access control for wireless networks over WEP. Various companies and associations have collaborated to develop the WPA standard, which is forward compatible with the upcoming IEEE 802.11i standard.
WPA provides several benefits to enhance security over previous models. It keeps out unwanted users by checking for the proper permission and password before allowing network access. It is also more robust than the security standard it is replacing, Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), which provides basic protection for home networks and limited protection on public networks. WPA improves data encryption so attackers will not be able to view or alter any data traveling to or from your wireless network.
How WPA Uses Encryption Keys
WEP uses 64- or 128-bit encryption keys, but WPA offers up to 256-bit encryption keys, which are exponentially harder to decode.
With WEP it was possible for an attacker to "sniff" packets and by comparing each with the one before it, eventually crack the security code. Even with 128bit encryption, this would only take 2-3 hours if there was moderate web surfing over the wireless link. However, since WEP never changes, an attacker could discover it on their lunch hour over a couple of days! With WPA it changes as often as you want it to (50 min is sufficient), so by the time they can decode your old WPA key, your network has already switched to a new WPA key, so WPA is significantly better than WEP, which uses the same WEP key repeatedly.
Even if you don't have WPA on your particular wireless device, it's still advisable to use WEP with 128bit encryption, as some protection is better then none. Linksys even includes a small utility that translates a "password" or "secret phrase" into a 128bit character code, so you don't have to enter the 32 character long string by hand.
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