WEP vs. WPA

[Andrew Jorgensen]

On 5/1/06, Shane Hathaway <shane at hathawaymix.org> wrote:
> There's one thing I'm curious about.  I wonder whether a card that
> implements WEP in hardware, but not WPA, can be taught WPA through
> software.  If so, when I'm comparing wireless cards, I can ignore WPA
> support and go for the cheaper alternative.

That's how my old Prism 2.5 card worked, but you had to install a
later firmware to get it to work.  The WPA stuff happens in software
but I'm guessing the card has to support re-keying.  It's likely that
almost all (if not all) cards do WPA in the driver and WEP on the
card.

You'd want to check if your card will work with wpa-supplicant if
you're planning on going that route.  wpa-supplicant doesn't support
all wireless cards because there is no standard way to talk to a
wireless card, they all use different ioctls.