#Wpa2 personal vs enterprise full#
#Wpa2 personal vs enterprise software#

The confusion started last month when the Wi-Fi Alliance changed the WPA and WPA2 standards from supporting a single EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) standard to five EAP standards. IвЂ™d guess that a device connecting to your Time Capsule just sees a request for a WPA2 password, hence why it doesnвЂ™t ask you for a WPA2 Personal password.If the challenge of securing a wireless LAN wasn't already confusing enough, things have just gotten worse. I donвЂ™t know what that is, but it sounds clever and secure. Enterprise connects to a вЂњRADIUS serverвЂќ for authentication. Personal is more suitable for a home network, but itвЂ™s less secure than enterprise. I believe that WPA and WPA2 both come in these two flavours, hence the either/or. WPA2 - Enterprise verifies network users through a server. WPA2 - Personal protects unauthorized network access by utilizing a set-up password. WPA2 can be enabled in two versions - WPA2 Personal and WPA2 Enterprise. вЂњPersonalвЂќ and вЂњEnterpriseвЂќ just refer to the two flavours of WPA and WPA2. Although not directly answering the question, I include it for interest. I donвЂ™t think thereвЂ™s any meaningful difference in the security.ДЇWIW, IвЂ™ve used WPA2 Personal on my Airport Extreme since I bought it, and no device has ever had problems connecting.Д¬onfession: I initially misread the question as being about the difference between Personal and Enterprise, and wrote this. In a nutshell, a WPA/WPA2 network will any network card that supports WPA or WPA2 to connect to it whereas a WPA2 only network locks out network cards that only support the newer standard.

#Wpa2 personal vs enterprise software#

WPA is both forward and backward-compatible and is designed to run on existing Wi-Fi devices as a software download. The Wikipedia article cites a white paper from the Wi-Fi Alliance: This advanced protocol will not work with some older network cards.

#Wpa2 personal vs enterprise full#

The later WPA2 certification mark indicates compliance with the full IEEE 802.11i standard.

Some network cards canвЂ™t connect to WPA2 networks. I believe that WPA was the original WPA standard, and WPA2 was an improved version of it. The 'personal' pre-shared key ('PSK') is derived from the passphrase you type into your client, so even if PSK allowed long keys, you'd have to type a passphrase that most people would object to. This further decreases the likelihood that an attacker can figure out the key in the time it's in use.

much longer keys (like 2048 bit, versus 128 for 'personal').

There's also traceability: I know which WiFi device belongs to which user.

central management: I don't have to set keys on every access point, and I can disable accounts of individual users.

And, if you don't already know, WEP is basically the same as having no security at all.ДЄnother poster points out that the 'Enterprise' modes send authentication requests to a server before allowing a client on the network. 'WPA/WPA2 Personal', also called mixed-mode, allows negotiation of key management modes and reduces the security of the network to the lowest common denominator.Д«OTTOM LINE: If you're concerned about security/privacy of information on your networks (wired and wireless), DON'T use WPA or WPA/WPA2. TKIP is vulnerable to attack (it's not secure) and should not be used. WPA uses something called TKIP to manage the keys used to encrypt the data. Both 'WPA' and 'WPA2' use AES to encrypt the information transiting the WiFi network, but