Buffalo's AirStation Products Earn WPA Certification

Buffalo Technology's 802.11g AirStation line of wireless networking products Tuesday received Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) certification, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance.

Buffalo, a wireless networking vendor based in Austin, Texas, said its WPA-certified products include the AirStation 54Mbps Wireless Broadband Base Station, the AirStation 54Mbps Wireless Notebook Adapter and the AirStation 54Mbps Wireless PCI Client Card Adapter.

WPA is a much-anticipated security solution that replaces the existing WLAN security solution, called Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). WPA is a subset of the IEEE 802.11i amendment to the 802.11 standard.

WPA differs in only three primary aspects from 802.11i: it offers peer-to-peer support, preauthentication and a new cipher used to encrypt the data, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance.

Among the first round of products to receive the Wi-Fi Alliance's WPA certification earlier this year were Atheros' 802.11a/b/g CardBus Reference Design Board, Atheros' 802.11a/b/g Access Point, Broadcom's 802.11g Access Point Reference Design and 802.11g CardBus Reference Design, Cisco Access Point AIR-AP 1230B, Intel's Pro/Wireless 2100 LAN 3B Mini-PCI Adapter, Intersil's PRIMS 2.5 Reference Design PCMCIA Card and Access Point Development Kit, and the Symbol Wireless Networker CompactFlash WLAN Adapter.