The WLAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI) "standard" won't die: WAPI is a homegrown, proprietary encryption and authentication solution developed in part by the Chinese computer industry and in part by military- and government-controlled entities. WAPI has been slapped around by the ISO, in part because China's industry won't publish the spec. Problematic. A few years ago, WAPI was going to be required for all equipment sold in China, but high-level Bush administration negotiation apparently squashed that plan. It would have required foreign firms to partner with domestic companies, revealing significant silicon intellectual property in the process. You can see the posts in the WAPI soap opera through this link.
The latest news is that the Asia Times reports that two non-governmental wireless integrators have agreed to use WAPI as their preferred standard--over 802.1X and 802.11i, apparently. There's also been an increase in the number of firms involved in the WAPI Industrial Alliance: Once 11, there are now 22. One of the arguments made for developing a domestic standard, which is not an unusual step in China, is to reduce IP payments. Of course, there are extremely few royalties paid for any aspect of 802.1X or 802.11 deployment. If devices made in China can retail in the U.S. for $20 or less, it's hard to see that IP forms a significant outflow of yuan.
This Asia Times article is reasonably fair in recounting the technical, standards body, and political turmoil and series of events that have made WAPI such a hot potato. "Supporters of 802.11i say WAPI cannot be considered as a global standard because the Chinese government has not made its algorithms public and therefore independent verification of the strength of the security is not possible." Dead on.
A Chinese research firm is quoted in the article noting that over half of the WLAN products due on the market by the end of 2006 will be WAPI compliant. That doesn't preclude compliance with IEEE standards or Wi-Fi certification, of course. The Wi-Fi Alliance, in fact, opened a Chinese certification branch almost 14 months ago. The Alliance requires conformance with 802.11i-derived WPA and WPA2 encryption and authentication, which means that any product that supports WAPI and wants a Wi-Fi seal must also support the IEEE-based security methods.
I've said this every time I report on WAPI, but it's worth repeating. It's almost certain that WAPI contains backdoors to allow government surveillance of Wi-Fi traffic. As 802.11i has been published, it's almost certain that it does not contain such backdoors. China has an explicit policy of requiring the ability to monitor voice and data as it passes across domestic networks, so it's naive to assume that WAPI isn't being pushed as a way to ensure that a secure protocol that can't be broken into while in transit isn't used.
In the past, when I've stated this, commenters have accused me of being an anti-Sinite, or making up information. I'm neither. There's no logical leap involved in connecting WAPI, its government and military backers, and traditional Chinese information technology requirements.