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Re: Who is interested in wireless cards for the Adelaide IETF meeting?

2000-03-09 19:30:03
At 04:08 PM 3/4/00 -0500, Marcus Leech wrote:
Bill Sommerfeld wrote:
>
>
> I hope the 128 bit "gold" cards use a longer IV..
>
>                                                 - Bill
Does anyone know if the 128-bit variant of WEP is openly specified anywhere?

The last I heard RC4 was owned by RSA and not exactly open. But I do have a PDF file describing Lucent's WEP implementation a layer above RC4, so it covers some of the key management details. If you really need it, let me know. Also you can read the encryption section of 802.11

With the spinoff of the Enterprise portion of Lucents business, will the
  128-bit variant quietly die?  I hope not (assuming that it's any good, of
course).

Certainly not. But as someone else mentioned, there are U.S. laws or regulations restricting sales of 128-bit encryption overseas. So I kind of doubt it will be enabled on the base stations in Adelaide. But I suppose you can purchase such cards in the U.S. and they will work fine in Adelaide with encryption turned off.

As for pricing, note that the price for the cards that will be sold in Adelaide are in Australian dollars which are valued quite differently than U.S. dollars.

Disclaimer: I am neither a lawyer or a crypto expert. Nor do I work in the Wavelan division of Lucent. I'm just lamely trying to help.