Buffalo, Linksys Offer WPA Support For WLAN Products

Buffalo Friday said it would include WPA support for its prestandard 802.11g products. The Austin, Texas-based vendor's WPA-ready devices include the AirStation 54 Mbps Wireless Broadband Base Station/Router (WBR-G54), priced at $199; the AirStation G54 Wireless Notebook Adapter (WLI-CB-G54A), priced at $119; and the AirStation G54 Wireless PCI Client Adapter Card (WLI-PCI-G54), priced at $139.

At press time, the 802.11g standard--which promises transmission speeds of up to 54 Mbps and is backward-compatible with 802.11b products--remained a draft specification. The IEEE standards body is expected to ratify the 802.11g draft specification next week.

Irvine, Calif.-based Linksys, now a division of Cisco Systems, also announced WPA support for its top-selling WLAN products, including its Wireless-G PC Card (WPC54G) and its Wireless-B PC Card (WPC11 V.3).

The latest WLAN security standard, WPA, is expected to replace the existing Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) standard. According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, WPA offers stronger encryption and user-authentication features that eliminate inherent security flaws found in WEP.

Thus far, solution providers have found selling WLAN security a difficult proposition because competing standards and technologies have complicated the selection of security solutions. WPA promises to eliminate that situation by standardizing both encryption and authentication, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance, solution providers and vendors.

For current users of Buffalo and Linksys products, WPA support is available via a firmware upgrade provided on each company's Web site.

FRANK J. OHLHORST contributed to this story.