what is a wpa key

A WPA key is a password used to connect to a wireless network that is part of the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) scheme of wireless internet security. WPA is a security standard developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance to provide better data encryption and user authentication than the original Wi-Fi security standard, Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). WPA uses pre-shared keys to facilitate strong encryption security for wireless data transmission. The WPA key is shared to all devices that are meant to have network access, and it consists of a string of 256 bits of data. The WPA key can be generated directly by a user and shared in the form of a hexadecimal key that is 64 digits in length, or it can be shared using a passphrase and a key derivation function. The passphrase consists of strings of up to 63 ASCII characters. If you are using a router that provides Wi-Fi internet connections, you need a WPA key to authenticate a connection to the network. You can get the WPA password from whoever runs the network, and in some cases, a default WPA passphrase or password may be printed on a wireless router.