When personal computers first appeared they were large and bulky and not very portable. To be connected to the internet or even a local network your computer needed to be wired to one spot. This was okay since you were not moving around anyway. As technology increased computers became small enough it fit in your hand. People now wanted to access networks and the internet while on the go. You can now access the internet not only in your home or office but in stores, coffee shops, parks and pretty much anywhere else. Before all this information could begin floating around we needed to make sure there were ways to make it secure. .
In 1990 the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) began developing specifications for implementing wireless local area network computer communication. After seven years of work the IEEE released 802.11 WLAN standard. This standard used three methods for protecting data, controlling access, wired equivalent privacy (WEP), and device authentication. .
Controlling access was limiting the devices that could access the access point or central base station. IEEE 802.11 standard does not specify how you specifically control access that was left up to individual vendors. Since all wireless devices have a unique 48-bit identifier called a media access control or MAC address most vendors used MAC address filtering which required entering the MAC address of each computer into the access point. .
Wired Equivalent Privacy or WEP was a security algorithm which encrypted information. The client computer and access point both has a key which would decode the information. The keys could be 64 bits or 128 bits in length, with most systems using the 128 bit key since a longer key would be harder to break. WEP had many issues. The algorithm used required complete synchronization, since data loss is common in wireless transmission it made it difficult to keep the client and access point in sync.
