Alliance to certify Wi-Fi security specs

HANOVER, GERMANY -- The Wi-Fi Alliance expects to certify by May its WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) set of specifications in the first of several efforts to provide greater security to users of high-speed wireless networks, said Andrea Vocale, a technical expert with the alliance, speaking Monday at a news conference at the CeBIT trade show here.

WPA is a subset of the 802.11i security standard, which has yet to be approved by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).

The alliance, launched in 1999 as a nonprofit organization to certify interoperability of IEEE 802.11 products, expects approval from the standards body by the fourth quarter of this year, according to Brian Grim, marketing director for the alliance. The alliance expects to certify interoperability by the second quarter of 2004, Grim said. Products with 802.11i-standardized security features should be available later in the fourth quarter, he said.

Once approved and certified, the 802.11i standard will be called WPA2 and will be backward compatible with WPA, Grim said.

The alliance also expects the IEEE to approve the faster 802.11g standard by June or August, said Vocale, who is also business development manager of wireless networking at the U.K. subsidiary of Cisco Systems. "Once the standard has been approved, we can move ahead quickly with the certification," he said.

The first "unplug fest," which gives developers and other groups time to work with the 802.11g standard, has already taken place, Vocale said, declining to comment on the results. The goal of the "fest" is to work out technical bugs.

The 802.11g standard, operating in the 2.4GHz band, provides speeds up to 54Mbps. It will be backward compatible to the widely used 802.11b standard, operating in the same band but offering speeds up to 11Mbps.

The 802.11a standard, which occupies the 5GHz band, also provides speeds up to 54Mbps.

In a move to simplify the names of the various products, the Wi-Fi Alliance aims to drop the 802.11 a, b and g classifications and replace them with the frequency and speed of each wireless access service in its new Wi-Fi zone program informing users of certified Wi-Fi locations.

A Wi-Fi Zone sign posted at relevant hot-spot locations will show arrows pointing to the available wireless services. The services include 11Mbps and 54Mbps transmission in the 2.4GHz range, and 54Mbps service in the 5GHz range.

In addition, the Wi-Fi Alliance officially opened its zone-finding search engine on Wednesday, Vocale said. The search engine, found at the alliance's Web site www.wi-fi.org, will list all hotspots that meet specific criteria to ensure quality service, Vocale said. "We've just started to collect information on the many locations around the world, so what you see in our database today is just the beginning," he said.