Admintly — Home Network Setup | admintly.net
A comparison of the security generations and which one to choose today.
WPA, WPA2 and WPA3 are three security certification programs developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance after serious weaknesses were found in WEP. WEP itself predates the certification programs and is now considered broken; it should not be enabled on any network.
WPA became available in 2003 as an intermediate measure. It was designed to run on hardware that predated the certification programs, which is why it appeared before WPA2 rather than alongside it.
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WPA2, based on IEEE 802.11i, became available in 2004. Because it rests on a formal standard rather than an interim measure, it became the practical baseline for home networks and remained so for well over a decade.
The Wi-Fi Alliance announced WPA3 in January 2018 with several security improvements over WPA2. WPA3 is the mode to enable where every device supports it; where devices differ, mixed modes that accept both WPA2 and WPA3 are common on current routers.
As of 2023, most computers connecting to a wireless network support WPA, WPA2 and WPA3. The practical choice of mode is therefore limited by the oldest device you still use, not by the router. Check the connection details on a client device after selecting a mode to confirm which generation is actually in use.
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