A Performance Analysis of WEP and WPA2 Protocols to Ensure WLAN Security

Security is the major issue among the WLAN user community since users are comfortable with the mobility and portability of the mobile devices.  The ease of use makes them to concentrate on the minimum security measures like a basic authentication with a periodic change of passwords. On the other side of these technological benefits, there is always a hidden chance of intrusions on the personal and business data.   The data authentication, authorization, data integrity and confidentiality are the most used specifications for securing the wireless network. So the ultimate solution is to protect the data from all types of attack and losses. For this the user must know the types of attacks and the prevention methods. This paper analyzes the two security protocols namely RC4 and AES, which are used in WEP and WPA2 respectively.  The purpose of this paper is to give developers with little or no knowledge of cryptography the ability to understand the encryption and decryption techniques used in RC4, AES algorithms and also a comparative performance analysis methodology.