WPA2 - is it implemented in hardware or software (or both)?

[Svein Olav jerkeset]

Hi,

I have two D-Link GWL-520 PCI cards, one running as an AP (Fedora Core 6 with hostapd 0.4.9), the other is in a Windows XP box running in managed mode (client). Today this configuration works well with WPA/TKIP. I would however like to use WPA2 if possible.

My question is:
Is WPA2 implemented in software (hostapd/wpa_supplicant) only, or does the hardware need to support WPA2 as well?

I have tried to configure hostapd to use WPA2 by setting wpa=2 and wpa_pairwise=CCMP. When I do this, the WLAN shows up as WPA2 in Windows XP, but the state changes to disconnected almost immediately after I get a connected state.

Thanks in advance,
Svein Olav Bjerkeset