The Wi-Fi standards nomenclature, 802.11n and 802.11ac are both previous Wi-Fi standards, with the successor to 802.11ac supposedly to be called 802.11ax, but now the WiFi Alliance has simply renamed it as Wi-Fi 6.
While Wi-Fi 6 is expected to make its way into new installations come 2019, with a host of technological upgrades aimed at simplifying wireless-network problems, and at the same time making it easier to find routers and devices that support the new standard.
On the other hand, WPA stands for Wi-Fi Protected Access, and there are older standards like WPA1 and WPA2 which aren’t quite secure anymore with the increasing risks associated with modern networking connections.
The WPA3 standard brings new security features not present in WPA2 and manufacturers must fully implement these features to their devices to be “Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ WPA3™” as the new specifications require compatible WPA3 devices and WPA3 routers.
According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, devices with support for WPA3 will be coming later in the year, even as Qualcomm has already developed chips that supports WPA3, albeit it’ll take quite awhile for manufacturers to integrate them into new devices.
The new security features in WPA3 include fixes for using “individualized data encryption” which if connected through an open Wi-Fi network, encrypt the traffic between your device and the Wi-Fi access point, even without a password at the connection.
Also, if a device connects to a Wi-Fi access point, it carries out a “handshake” that ensures the correct passphrase is used and that the connection is encrypted.
The security issue with public Wi-Fi hotspot would soon be a thing of the past, as WPA3 promises to “simplify the process of configuring security for devices” and it would be a lot like the current Wi-Fi Protected Setup, that involves a push button to connect a device.
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