A little late to the party, Zyxel Communications now supports WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) with its 802.11g access points and wireless routers.
I tested the ZyAir G-2000 wireless router, an 802.11g-compliant device that includes a four-port 10/100M-bps switch, two detachable variable antennas, a stateful inspection firewall engine and simple Web filtering services. The G-2000, which shipped last month, sells for $165.
The G-2000 provides versatile security with MAC filtering; WPA for use with an external RADIUS server; and WPA-PSK, a slimmed-down version for smaller sites that uses a preshared key for authentication.
The G-2000s integrated user database distinguishes it from other vendors wireless routers. Supporting as many as 32 users internally, the database can be used for 802.1x authentication in conjunction with EAP-MD5 (Extensible Authentication Protocol with MD5) presenting user credentials.
Unfortunately, EAP-MD5 cannot be used to generate encryption keys dynamically, so WPA still requires an external RADIUS server.
For more information, go to www.zyxel.com.
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