What does “WPA” mean in ifconfig_wlan0=“WPA DHCP”

Question

The handbook suggests that these settings can be used for WPA in FreeBSD:

wlans_ath0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA DHCP"

But as far as I'm concerned this very settings can be used for WEP.
So what does "WPA" here stand for?

Answer 1

Judging by the code inside /etc/network.subr, "WPA" is a pseudo argument which triggers invocation of wpa_supplicant.

Answer 2

WPA indicate that the wireless device wlan0 use WPA security protocols.

For WEP:

wepmode on