TKIP is also called WEP Key hashing and was initially referred to as WEP2. TKIP is a temporary solution that fixes the key reuse problem of WEP, as illustrated in Figure . WEP periodically uses the same key to encrypt data. The TKIP process begins with a 128-bit temporal key that is shared among clients and access points. TKIP combines the temporal key with the client MAC address. It then adds a relatively large, 16-octet initialization vector to produce the key that will encrypt the data. This is illustrated in Figure . This procedure ensures that each station uses different key streams to encrypt the data. WEP Key hashing protects weak Initialization Vectors (IVs) from being exposed by hashing the IV on a per-packet basis.

TKIP uses RC4 to perform the encryption, which is the same as WEP. A major difference from WEP, however, is that TKIP changes temporal keys every 10,000 packets. This provides a dynamic distribution method, which significantly enhances the security of the network.

An advantage of using TKIP is that companies having existing WEP-based access points and radio NICs can upgrade to TKIP through relatively simple firmware patches. In addition, WEP-only equipment will still interoperate with TKIP-enabled devices using WEP. TKIP is only a temporary solution. Most experts believe that stronger encryption is still needed.