You might have noticed that there are multiple encryption settings on your router security. These are the protocols that protect your network from any sort of privy intrusions and ensure that any transmission of the data on your Wi-Fi network is safe and protected. There are different types of encryption protocols that you can use on your Wi-Fi networks such as WPA or WPA2. WPA encryptions use a certain set of keys to ensure that there is no intrusion on your network. To have a better understanding of these keys, and what is group key rotation interval, you need to learn about the encryption protocol in detail.
Group Keys
Group keys are generated and shared among all the devices on any Wi-Fi network that is using a WPA or WPA2 encryption. These keys ensure that there is no alien device that is connected to the router or intruding in the Wi-Fi transmission. These keys can be alphanumeric, a phrase, or simply some words. The keys are randomly generated by the router and all the devices that are connected on the router share the same key.
Group Key Rotation
These group keys are randomly changed by the router and assigned to all the devices to ensure an enhanced layer of security. This way, if there is some unauthorized access to the router, your mobile or Wi-Fi network is eliminated automatically. Since these keys are random, the key rotation process takes place within a fraction of seconds. Each key is sent to all the devices, and these devices send these keys back at regular intervals. Once the key is changed, the previous key gets invalid and if some device did not receive the new key, it will be disconnected from the Wi-Fi network.
Group Key Rotation Interval
Group Key rotation interval is the time that it takes to rotate the key on any given router. All the keys are rotated and the process happens so fast that you will barely notice it. However, there are slight network speed issues on some of the slow routers but that is easily avoidable if you have fast internet and a good router. This is a must-have layer of security for any Wi-Fi network and has proven to be highly efficient for practical applications and during demonstrations.
Group Key Interval
Group Key interval is the time that a router uses one key for. This is totally random and depends on your network speed, router, its firmware, and devices you have connected. It is not certain that for what specific time a key will be used by any encryption on your Wi-Fi network.
Be mindful that to keep the process safe, you will not have access to any of these keys or the process on a stock firmware of your router. Some custom firmware might allow you to change these settings, but it is not recommended to do that to ensure optimal security for your Wi-Fi network and all the devices that are connected over this particular network.