While caching speeds up the process of re-association, it does nothing
to address association with new access points. To address this issue,
Cisco and Microsoft contributed a rather crude pre-authentication
algorithm that anticipates roaming. While a number of committee members
were openly critical of this system, the majority felt that it was
better to have a limited pre-authentication standard than none at all.
Additional work on this problem will continue under the auspices of the
newly formed 802.11k committee. (Some day, we'll run out of letters in
the alphabet for 802.11 committees.)
It's worth noting that 802.11i isn't a universally acceptable solution.
It's tough to imagine, for example, a hotspot operator building its
security implementation around 11i. That's because to be effective, you
have to have some control over client configurations. But for
enterprises willing to bit the bullet, it's a solid enhancement that
should help overcome one of the biggest obstacles to WLAN deployment.
-- Dave Molta, [email protected]
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