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  • By Howard - edited: January 9, 2018

    Yesterday at CES, the WFA announced a new Wi-Fi security suite.

    As some expected, it will be called WPA3, although originally this was only a "place holder" title.

    It will supposedly use OWE (Opportunistic Wireless Encryption) and SAE (Security Among Equals) algorithms. 

    SAE was first developed for MESH networks, and the IEEE has been talking about OWE for a while now.

    WPA3 will be put into effect early this year 2018.

    At least one write-up today, said that WPA3 will require more horsepower than WPA2 - which I haven't verified.   That would not entirely surprise me as WPA2 was held up waiting for more powerful processors too. 

    Let's see if more client devices have trouble keeping up with the WFA testing regimen because of this - not everything is handled by the Wi-Fi chipset !

  • This is good news. For example OWE will address a major shortcoming of current wireless security for public access points.

    My guess is that WiFi vendors will want to sell new hardware for WPA3. We'll see if client side can be handled by software updates, at least for computers. If WPA3 requires new chipsets or special hardware acceleration it will take another five years to spread. (Most BYOD environments still support TKIP...)

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