Overview
WEP (or Wired Equivalent Privacy) was the initial security scheme included in
the 1999 version of the IEEE 802.11 standard for wireless networks. As its name
suggests, WEP was intended to provide comparable confidentiality to a standard
wired network. WEP is based on the popular RC4 stream cipher, but cryptographic
weaknesses in the way it was being used were soon identified and WEP was superseded
by WPA (or Wi-Fi Protected Access) in 2003. WPA is still based on RC4, but has
additional protection built-in to patch up the main vulnerabilities identified
in the original WEP scheme. WPA was intended as a temporary solution until a
more considered approach to security could be agreed. This came in the form of
the full IEEE 802.11i standard (also known as WPA2) in 2004, which brings in
AES-CCM based encryption and authentication.
Helion WEP & TKIP Solutions
Any 802.11 WLAN designs which must interwork with legacy equipment may
still require support for these earlier security protocols, and Helion
have in place a suite of solutions which can address this. We have solutions
which cover the encryption aspect of the standard (based on our
ARC4 core), plus the TKIP key mixing and Michael
authentication tag generation. We can support data rates which match a
typical WLAN requirement, but also have in place much higher rate
solutions which may be typically encountered in wireless switch applications.
All these cores have been used in production ASIC and FPGA silicon, so have
been extremely well proven in the field. They have also formed part of products
which have been successfully WiFi accredited.
Datasheets
For full details of the Helion WEP/TKIP cores, please download the datasheet appropriate
to your target technology.
Click here for the Xilinx FPGA core data sheet (PDF format)
Please contact Helion for ASIC, Altera and Microsemi (Actel) datasheets.
Contact
For more detailed information on this or any of our other products and services,
please feel free to email us at
helioncores@heliontech.com and we will be pleased to discuss how we can assist
with your individual requirements.
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