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Chapter 6 Wireless LAN
PLA450 User’s Guide
66
By default, a WPS devices is “unconfigured”. This means that it is not part of an existing
network and can act as either enrollee or registrar (if it supports both functions). If the registrar
is unconfigured, the security settings it transmits to the enrollee are randomly-generated. Once
a WPS-enabled device has connected to another device using WPS, it becomes “configured”.
A configured wireless client can still act as enrollee or registrar in subsequent WPS
connections, but a configured access point can no longer act as enrollee. It will be the registrar
in all subsequent WPS connections in which it is involved. If you want a configured AP to act
as an enrollee, you must reset it to its factory defaults.
6.5.2.1 Example WPS Network Setup
This section shows how security settings are distributed in an example WPS setup.
The following figure shows an example network. In step 1, both AP1 and Client 1 are
unconfigured. When WPS is activated on both, they perform the handshake. In this example,
AP1 is the registrar, and Client 1 is the enrollee. The registrar randomly generates the security
information to set up the network, since it is unconfigured and has no existing information.
Figure 31 WPS: Example Network Step 1
In step 2, you add another wireless client to the network. You know that Client 1 supports
registrar mode, but it is better to use AP1 for the WPS handshake with the new client since
you must connect to the access point anyway in order to use the network. In this case, AP1
must be the registrar, since it is configured (it already has security information for the
network). AP1 supplies the existing security information to Client 2.
Figure 32 WPS: Example Network Step 2
REGISTRARENROLLEE
SECURITY INFO
CLIENT 1
AP1
REGISTRAR
CLIENT 1
AP1
ENROLLEE
CLIENT 2
EXISTING CONNECTION
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