What is WiFi?

The term WiFi stands for a network standard with which devices are certified by the WiFi Alliance. Although the terms WiFi and WLAN are often used syn­ony­mous­ly, WiFi only stands for a specific type of WLAN.

What exactly is WiFi?

WiFi, in essence, is primarily a brand name as­so­ci­at­ed with the WiFi Alliance. This name is linked to WLAN devices certified by this or­ga­ni­za­tion, adhering to the IEEE 802.11 standard. This standard is used for devices that can interact with other devices in a wireless network while meeting certain security and quality char­ac­ter­is­tics. To be of­fi­cial­ly labeled as “WiFi”, a device must receive cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the WiFi Alliance. Col­lo­qui­al­ly, however, the term WiFi is used for any form of wireless network and thus as a synonym for WLAN.

What does WiFi mean?

The term WiFi is derived from “wireless fidelity”. It was invented by a con­sult­ing agency and is intended to be rem­i­nis­cent of the well-known term “HiFi”. The aim was to create a higher recog­ni­tion value for the bulky IEEE 802.11 des­ig­na­tion. The WiFi Alliance initially promoted their standard with the ad­ver­tis­ing slogan “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity” which even­tu­al­ly evolved into the catchy name we use today for wireless networks. The WiFi Alliance itself is a con­sor­tium made up of over 300 companies. The goal of this alliance was to establish a uniform standard that would ensure com­pat­i­bil­i­ty between different man­u­fac­tur­ers.

WiFi vs. WLAN – what’s the dif­fer­ence?

Although the terms WiFi and WLAN are often used syn­ony­mous­ly, this is not entirely correct. WLAN stands for “Wireless Local Area Network” which refers to a network con­nect­ing devices to the internet wire­less­ly. WiFi, as mentioned earlier, is a specific type of WLAN certified according to the IEEE 802.11 standard. It’s important to note that while WiFi is a type of WLAN, not all WLANs are WiFi. WiFi is the most widely used standard for wireless net­work­ing globally.

What is WiFi 6?

Orig­i­nal­ly, there was only one WiFi standard according to which all cor­re­spond­ing devices were certified. These devices were allowed to carry the “WiFi certified” seal after a test by the WiFi Alliance. However, since the different gen­er­a­tions became more and more dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed over time, the WiFi Alliance decided in 2018 to take these dif­fer­ences into account for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Because the official des­ig­na­tions, such as IEEE 802.11n or IEEE 802.11ac, were iden­ti­fied as too unwieldy here, the WiFi gen­er­a­tions were numbered instead. They differ primarily in their the­o­ret­i­cal­ly achiev­able speed.

While older standards WiFi 1 to WiFi 3 are hardly used today, there are ever more devices using the newest gen­er­a­tions WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E, which were in­tro­duced in 2021 and can achieve speeds of between 600 and 9,608 MBit per second. WiFi 4, in­tro­duced in 2009 with a speed capacity of up to 600 Mbit/s, and WiFi 5, which made its debut in 2013 with speeds reaching up to 6,933 Mbit/s, continue to be prevalent in current networks. WiFi 7 has already been announced for 2024.