First Wi-Fi-Secure Products Certified

The Wi-Fi Alliance has announced the first products to be certified for Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 security compliance. It also introduced a Wi-Fi multimedia certification program for quality of service in wireless LANs. The first certified products are pending.

Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2) builds on its predecessor, which was based upon prestandard IEEE 802.11i extension elements. That spec has since been finalized. WPA2 adds the Advanced Encryption Standard, which is considered essential to meet FIPS140-2 government security requirements.

According to Franz Hanzlik, managing director of the Wi-Fi Alliance, WPA2 caters to consumers while addressing the demands of the IT sector for more security with interoperability. The new certification list includes products from Atheros, Broadcom, Cisco, Intel, Realtek and Gateway. The first WPA2-certified products will appear later this month, said Hanzlik.

QoS certification

On Sept 9, the Alliance will also announce the first products to be certified under its Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) program for quality of service (QoS) for WLANs. The WMM is based on QoS extensions defined by the IEEE 802.11e task group. While that group is not expected to complete its standard until March 2005, certain key elements have already been extracted and incorporated into products.These have been codified into Wireless Multimedia Extensions (WME) and the more deterministic -- but less developed -- Wireless Schedule Multimedia (WSM) specifications.

According to Hanzlik, the WMM effort moves away from the WME-versus-WSM debate and instead provides a two-stage umbrella certification program. The first products to be announced next week will meet WME specifications, with WSM certified to follow later this year, he said.