Wi-Fi
termnetworking
Stands for: Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN)
The consumer name for wireless LAN built on IEEE 802.11 - and a certification mark from the Wi-Fi Alliance.
Every Wi-Fi generation is an 802.11 amendment: Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n), Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac), Wi-Fi 6/6E (802.11ax), Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be-2024). The IEEE writes the standard; the Wi-Fi Alliance owns the trademark and runs interoperability certification, which is why marketing says 'Wi-Fi 7' while datasheets say '802.11be'. Security rides on top via WPA2 and WPA3.
Wi-Fi is a family of standards rather than one technology, and the version numbers people quote hide the parts that determine whether a network actually works. Throughput headlines come from wider channels and more spatial streams, both of which need conditions that a busy office rarely provides, so the advertised number is a ceiling nobody reaches.
The medium is shared and half duplex, which is the fact that explains most disappointing deployments. Every device on a channel contends for airtime, so a slow client transmitting for a long time consumes the capacity of several fast ones, and adding access points on overlapping channels makes contention worse rather than better. Designing for coverage alone produces a network that shows full signal and performs badly.
Security is the other half. WPA2 has known weaknesses and WPA3 addresses them, notably by replacing the handshake that made offline password attacks practical. Enterprise mode with per-user credentials is a different security model from a shared passphrase, and the migration friction is usually legacy devices that support neither, which is a procurement problem wearing the costume of a technical one.
Also known as: wifi, wi-fi, 802.11, wlan, wi-fi 6, wi-fi 7