If you work in the Wi-Fi industry you are used to throwing around technical terms to describe the various smarts that underpin the technology, like 802.11ax, 40MHz channel width, 256-QAM or OFDM. To the ordinary business manager, and even more so the consumer customer, these terms are just buzz words made up to make them feel inadequate, and force them to get a professional like you involved.
The Wi-Fi Alliance is an industry "club" made up of a large number of the vendors who make and sell Wi-Fi to the rest of the world. They don't create the Wi-Fi standards, that's the role of the IEEE, but they have a lot of influence in what the standards are, and how to implement them. The Wi-Fi Alliance also operates a number of certification schemes that are designed to help improve interworking between vendors, and help purchasers find products that will work - hence the commonly seen Wi-Fi Certified logo found on the packaging of a lot of products.
To help users to identify the technology that is inside the latest generations of Wi-Fi equipment, the Wi-Fi Alliance has created the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED scheme. Their website says:
"Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ products deliver interoperability with the latest technologies, and industry-standard security protections. The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED logo gives consumers confidence that the Wi-Fi devices purchased deliver a good user experience, regardless of brand. For retailers, vendors, and service providers, the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED seal of approval means consistent performance and better user experience."
Different generations of technology are numbered from 1 through to 6, with 802.11b being 1 and with the latest and greatest 802.11ax being 6. Who knows what will appear as 7?
These are the generations:
| 1 | 802.11b | introduced in 1999 |
| 2 | 802.11a | introduced in 1999 |
| 3 | 802.11g | introduced in 2003 |
| 4 | 802.11n | introduced in 2009 |
| 5 | 802.11ac | introduced in 2014 |
| 6 | 802.11ax | scheduled for release in 2019 |
The Certification programme comes with a set of logos that vendors can apply to their products, so that it will be easy for users to tell with just a glance.
The Certification also recommends a new set of widgets that can appear in the device User Interfaces, so end users can see with a glance what level of technology is being achieved with the current connection.
A follow-on article will discuss Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and what it really means to the end user and Wi-Fi network owner.