What is the difference between WEP and WPA?

WEP stands for Wired Equivalent Privacy, while WPA stands for Wi-Fi Protected Access. WEP happens to be the very first security mechanism that was technically embedded in wireless devices. Almost likewise, WPA also performs the function of the WEP, but it is an improved mechanism. WPA makes use of the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) to do the encryption of data. WEP was firstly designed to secure wireless networks, but it seems not fully capable, and in the course of finding an alternative improvement, WPA was hurriedly invented.

So, WPA is more recent than WEP, which happens to be an older mechanism. Also, WEP is weaker than WPA in performance; while WPA is strong and dependable enough to provide security mechanisms for wireless networks. Another thing that needs to be understood is that WPA cannot be used with older devices that are not recently manufactured to function with it. WPA demands more processing power than that of WEP.

WEP stands for Wired Equivalent Privacy, and it is the first security expedient that was founded on wireless devices. WEP was proposed to deliver a protection level that is equal to a wired network. Users can set their access points to either open or to use shared keys. WPA stands for Wi-Fi Protected Access, and WPA can be activated on some network devices through an upgrade; however, there are no devices that are too old and cannot use WPA.

WPA also takes up more processing power paralleled to WEP, and some devices can suffer from execution hits when using WPA under a heavy load. It requires more expertise and effort to break WPA, unlike WEP, which is somewhat easy. WEP is much weaker compared to WPA.

WEP means Wired Equivalent Privacy, while WPA means Wireless Protected Access. From the meanings alone, you can already guess that these two have some differences that should be noted. WEP is known to be a security standard, but this is not as secure as the WPA.

Some people even say that they only use WEP when they do not have any choice at all because its security is not up to par with the others. WPA will make sure that data is encrypted properly so that it cannot just be accessed by anyone who is just checking out people’s details online. This is one of the things that you can check too when looking at other websites.