Wi-Fi chip maker Intersil Corporation announced today that a software upgrade supporting Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) on all of its chipsets is officially available to original equipment manufacturer (OEM)
According to Chris Henningsen, vice president of marketing at Intersil, the software has been available since mid-December 2002. The company is making the announcement public today to make sure its customers are on track for upcoming interoperability
WPA is a new security standard for 802.11-based networks set forth by the Wi-Fi Alliance
“I’m happy to see the Wi-Fi Alliance do this,” says Henningsen, who acknowledges that the group, along with the IEEE
WEP, short for Wired Equivalent Privacy,
Intersil customers using any of the PRISM chipsets can get the WPA software upgrade from the corporate/restricted access area of Intersil’s Web site. End-users of Wi-Fi products will have to wait until the vendors shipping the products make the upgrade available.
Despite the cost to Intersil in implementing WPA on its chips — Henningsen says that despite being a semi-conductor company, it employs “more programmers than IC [integrated circuit] designers” — there will be no cost to OEM customers for the upgrade. Because of that, he’s “betting they’re going to pass [that cost] on through. I doubt you’ll see anyone charge for it.”