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1.7.1 Wireless Group Policy Versioning and Capability Negotiation

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The wireless Group Policy provides versioning capability using protocol-specific configuration data stored in the generic data store.

The administrative-side plug-in generates versioning data that reflects the wireless Group Policy format type and wireless network security settings. There are two format types: binary large object (BLOB)-based and XML-based.

In the BLOB-based format, the wireless connectivity and security settings are saved in a binary format, as described in section 2.2.1.1. The BLOB contains at least one sub-BLOB and can contain multiple sub-BLOBs. Each sub-BLOB contains a version number and version-specific policy settings. Three sub-BLOBs are currently defined:

  • Version 1 supports wireless security standards up to Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). For more details about WEP, see [IEEE802.11-2007].

  • Version 2 supports all the security standards version 1 supports plus Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA).

  • Version 3 supports all the security standards version 2 supports plus Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2).

In the XML-based format, the wireless connectivity and security settings are saved in XML. The XML-based format for the wireless Group Policy does not provide versioning or capability negotiations. Currently only one version of the XML format is defined. However, as described in section 6.1, the XML schema (XSD) namespace contains versioning information so that versioning or capability negotiations can be added if necessary. For more information about the XML-based wireless Group Policy, see section 2.2.1.2.

An XML-based wireless Group Policy takes precedence over a BLOB-based one. Within a format type, higher version numbers take precedence. The wireless Group Policy client-side plug-in fetches the version with highest precedence that it can interpret from those available in the generic data store.