Wireless security protocols — How WPA and WPA2 work

WPA and WPA2 improve upon WEP’s encryption methods for better 802.11 wireless security. WPA was carefully designed so that hardware upgrades would not be needed. The processing power of many early access points (APs) was quite limited. The RC4 cipher was chosen for WEP because it does not require a powerful CPU. WPA retains the use of RC4 but adds features designed to address the deficiencies in the way that WEP uses the cipher.