Forum Discussion

Sabot's avatar
Sabot
Follower
Aug 13, 2020
Solved

Question about WIFI encryption

So my buddy and I are having a debate. This is non-model specific and a general home wifi question. He said that when a wifi router encrypts traffic, it encrypts it all the way to the destination th...
  • antinode's avatar
    Aug 13, 2020

    > He said that when a wifi router encrypts traffic, it encrypts it all
    > the way to the destination through the internet.

     

       He's wrong.  Wi-Fi (stupid name) encryption is Wi-Fi encryption; it
    works on the link between the wireless access point and the client
    device.  It is intended to prevent someone who has a radio receiver in
    the neighborhood from gleaning useful information from your radio
    signals.

     

       The wireless access point and the client device negotiate the link
    encryption; some remote Web site (for example) knows nothing about it.

     

       Additional end-to-end encryption (HTTPS, SSH, SSL, ...) is entirely
    independent of Wi-Fi encryption.