Host based encryption needed with 1X?

[Jacques Caron]

At 15:56 09/01/2003, Magnus Ekhall wrote:
>Is host based encryption really needed when running 802.1X in hostap?
>If so, why?

If you are using encryption (which you should, with 802.1X), then host 
based encryption is needed because there's one key per station, and there 
is no known interface in the hostap firmware code to tell the card to use 
different keys for each station.

>Is the implemented 802.1X code compliant to the upcoming 802.11i standard 
>or is it some kind of ad-hoc solution?

802.11i contains a lot more than just 802.1X, and even 802.1X is changing 
(with 802.1aa), so I think the hostap 802.1X code is more "de facto 
standard" (mainly Cisco and XP) compliant than anything (the exact way to 
use 802.1X with 802.11 was/is not defined yet).

Jacques.


-- Jacques Caron, IP Sector Technologies
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