Comparative Analysis: Wi-Fi Security Protocols

In recent years, various wireless LAN technologies have gained rapid popularity and Wi-Fi can be cited as most prominent or proficient technology today. Wi-Fi stands for Wireless Fidelity and it operates in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz radio spectrum, support variable data rates and it is used to define the wireless technology in the IEEE 802.11b standard. Wireless network provides many advantages like mobility, cut costs but it is coupled with many security threats such as replay attack, eaves dropping, denial of services attack etc. The threats of intrusion into the wireless network have forced user to adopt a range of security. This paper presents an analysis of the three security protocols, from the WLANs security requirements point of view. In this paper, we discuss the wireless security protocols with details about the encryption & authentication mechanism used and their limitations.