
Does the Sony PSP support 802.11g or WPA security?I'm not too sure what the differences are, but my brother asked me if the Sony PSP supports 802.11 "b" or "g" and I really don't know. He also asked if it can connect to a WPA-based network, or just a WEP network, and, again, I don't know. Do you? Out of the box, the Sony Playstation Portable (PSP) supports the slower, first generation, widely available 802.11b network protocol, and the less-robust WEP wireless security protocol. However, according to some discussion in the Sony Playstation Discussion Boards, the PSP apparently has a Marvell 88W8010 RF transceiver chip, which supposedly supports both 802.11b and its newer, smarter cousin 802.11g. The problem is, Sony hasn't enabled the "g" protocol. I'm hardly an expert on the differences between the two, but I do know that 802.11g is faster and has better security, and that most people now believe that there's only fool's security in the 802.11b WEP system (that is, it's quite easy for someone with the desire to hack into a WEP-based network). Now, a few comments from Wikipedia to add to the story... "While 802.11g held the promise of higher throughput, actual results were degraded by a number of factors: conflict with 802.11b-only devices (see above), exposure to the same interference sources as 802.11b, limited channelization (only 3 fully non-overlapping channels like 802.11b) and the fact that the higher data rates of 802.11g are often more susceptible to interference than 802.11b, causing the 802.11g device to reduce the data rate to effectively the same rates used by 802.11b." and "Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is a scheme to secure wireless networks (WiFi). Because a wireless network broadcasts messages using radio, it is particularly susceptible to eavesdropping. WEP was intended to provide comparable confidentiality to a traditional wired network, hence the name. Several serious weaknesses were identified by cryptanalysts, and WEP was superseded by Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) in 2003, and then by the full IEEE 802.11i standard (also known as WPA2) in 2004. Despite the weaknesses, WEP provides a level of security that can deter casual snooping." I hope this is helpful and that your brother is mollified by this information. If someone's gotten a PSP to work with either a WPA or 802.11g system, please do let us know, but at this point, I don't believe it's possible.
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Sony PSP, MP3 Players, Etc.
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Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader. hi ive got a psp but i cant download music videos onto it such as MPEG files. Please help me!! Posted by: Andy at January 21, 2006 5:58 AMthe newer firmware upates (I beleive since 2.00) support WPA... but not 802.11g as far as I know. (take this comment with a grain of salt... I refuse to upgrade my firmware because I'd loose the ability to run homebrew) -jX Posted by: JimXugle at January 22, 2006 6:34 PMThis is the only thing holding me back from buying a PSP. The lack of 802.11g support. When I bought my wired/wireless router, I wasn't needing wireless, and it came with g only. Now that I'm seriously considering wireless devices, I'm stuck with g. It would be awesome if Sony fixed this problem. According to other websites, it already has a 802.11g chip, but it's just not enabled. Posted by: ZP at March 25, 2006 3:34 PMThe later firmware supports all standards, both b + g and also wpa. I usually update my PSP whenever there's a new firmware - and have since the 2.51 update been running WPA and 54Mpbs :-) Posted by: Bjarne Karlson at April 17, 2006 12:59 AMI just upgraded my firmware from 2.81 to 3.30 last night, and 802.11g has been turned on. My PSP had no problem connecting to my network at 802.11g with WPA2 encryption. Posted by: Joel at April 16, 2007 2:36 PMI have a lot to say, but ...
I do have a comment, now that you mention it!
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