couple of WPA passphrase questions

Will the size of the WPA passphrase impact in any way the speed of
data transmission? I would assume decrypting a larger key would take
longer but is it negligable?

AFAIK, WPA changes the passphrase every so often automatically. What
is the size of the passphrase it chooses, does it have any thing to do
with the size of the initial passphrase I created?

thanks

> Will the size of the WPA passphrase impact in any way the speed of
> data transmission? I would assume decrypting a larger key would take
> longer but is it negligable?

Not at all because the keysize is always the same. The WPA passphrase
is for authentication and is not the encryption key.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_P...curity_in_pre-
shared_key_mode

> AFAIK, WPA changes the passphrase every so often automatically. What
> is the size of the passphrase it chooses, does it have any thing to do
> with the size of the initial passphrase I created?

It doesn't change the passphrase at all, if you mean the key then yes,
they are not the same thing, if it changed it automatically, you
wouldn't know what to enter in order to use your machines on the network
would you?! :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Protected_Access

http://www.wi-fi.org/opensection/protected_access.asp

David.

speeder <no.spam@invalid.com> wrote:
>AFAIK, WPA changes the passphrase every so often automatically. What
>is the size of the passphrase it chooses, does it have any thing to do
>with the size of the initial passphrase I created?

No, the initial passphrase just gives it a place to start when
generating the 128-bit session key. However, make sure you choose a
sufficiently random key that it's not susceptable to dictionary
attack.

On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 22:15:48 GMT, David Taylor <djtaylor@bigfoot.com>
wrote:

>> Will the size of the WPA passphrase impact in any way the speed of
>> data transmission? I would assume decrypting a larger key would take
>> longer but is it negligable?
>
>Not at all because the keysize is always the same. The WPA passphrase
>is for authentication and is not the encryption key.

Aha! That's what I was confusing, authentication and encryption, two
separate "keys".

thanks