TI, Intersil, Atmel Back Wi-Fi Standard
Online staff -- Electronic News, 10/31/2002
Atmel Corp., Intersil Corp. and Texas Instruments Inc. today announced their support for the Wi-Fi Alliance's latest standard, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA).
The software upgrade follows the non-profit group's Wireless Encryption Privacy (WEP) encryption methodology, supported under the IEEE 802.11 standard, and is said to improve wireless message security.
WPA includes 802.1x as a foundation for port based network access control, authentication and key management and Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP), an increased level of security by implementing random re-keying on WEP, but does not include the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).
Specifically, Atmel will support the standard through its suite of 802.11b media access controller (MAC) and as an integrated hardware block in the San Jose-based company's future MAC plus baseband products and controller parts.
Intersil, which said it was actively involved in developing the WLAN standard, claimed to be the only supplier sampling a WPA security solution for both PC cards and access points with production release slated for December.
While TI will offer its 802.11 customers a software upgrade to existing products for the first round of Wi-Fi testing in February 2003.
“Wi-Fi Protected Access provides an easy software upgrade to existing products that allows WLAN equipment vendors to keep users’ data more secure, until the IEEE 802.11i standard is completed next year,” said Bill Carney, director of business development of TI’s wireless networking business unit and also TI’s member of the Wi-Fi Alliance board of directors, in a statement.
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