What is WiFi? 5 Facts Everyone Should Know About WiFi
Introduction:
If you have been to coffee shops, airports or railway stations. Most probably you are present in between wireless networks. WiFi is nothing but wireless LAN. Where LAN stands for Local Area Network. For those who don’t know what exactly a Local Area Network is. It is a group of connected devices that is restricted to a particular physical location. That physical location will be an office, home or building.
Moreover, a LAN can be small or large in the sense that it can range from home networks with one user to a larger enterprise with thousands of devices in an office. In many ways, WiFi is advantageous, first it removes all the hassle of the wires for connecting devices to the internet. Secondly, wireless LAN is easy to set up and economical.
Some folks confuse WiFi with the internet. The main difference between WiFi and the internet is that the internet is the data and WiFi is the wireless technology that sends these data through a medium which is air to the devices. Now is the time to understand how WiFi works and then we will jump to the WiFi facts.
How WiFi works :
A wireless network uses radio waves for its functioning. And radio waves are not limited to wireless networks, in fact, cell phones, radios and televisions also use radio waves. Moreover, communication in the wireless network is a two-way communication process. Let’s take a look at what happens when a device is connected to a wireless network.
- Firstly, the wireless adapter of the computer translates the data into the radio signal and transmits it using an antenna.
- Secondly, the wireless router receives those signals and decodes them. So now the router has received the signal and also decoded it. And after that, it sends that data to the internet using the wired ethernet connection.
Even this process also works in a reverse way. Like the router receives the data from the Internet and then converts it into radio signals. And then it sends the radio signals to the computer wireless adapter. So now let’s jump into the WiFi facts:
Facts about WiFi :
1. The name Wi-Fi doesn’t mean anything:
The term Wi-Fi does not have any full form. It is a misconception among the people that even today many people think that, Wi-Fi has a full form of Wireless Fidelity. In fact, it is not. This misconception was unintentionally created by the WiFi Alliance ( the company that created the WiFi wireless technology) when they published the tagline with respect to WiFi that “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity”. This was done to make this technology more meaningful to its users.
2. WiFi devices present in the world is 22.2 Billion in 2021:
As per the Statista website, the projected number of WLAN connected devices worldwide will be 22.2 billion by this year. This figure is sufficient to tell the popularity and mass adoption of the WLAN technology by people across the globe.
3. WiFi uses radio waves:
As I have told you earlier in this article, WLAN uses Radio Waves. In WLAN, radio waves carry the information over the air. The performance and range of the WiFi network are determined by the obstacles that come in their way. The range of the WLAN network depends on the operating frequencies of the router and here comes another fact next.
4. WiFi frequencies are different:
WLAN transmission occurs at a frequency of 2.4GHz or at 5GHz. These frequencies are in general much higher than those of cellular networks. In short, WiFi at 2.4GHz frequency travels more distance with lower speeds. On the other hand, 5GHz frequency provides faster speeds within the short distance range. Microwaves, baby monitors and garage door openers are examples of devices and appliances that use 2.4 GHz frequency for their operations.
5. There are several different kinds of WiFi:
There are several WLAN standards that differ from one another. The first and the original WiFi standard was IEEE 802.11. And this standard was created in the year 1997. And then by passing time several more standards came which includes IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, IEEE 802.11n, IEEE 802.11ac and IEEE 802.11ax. More details about these versions are given in the table below.
Conclusion:
So in this article, we have learned what WLAN is and how it works. Moreover, we have also looked at the five facts about WLAN networks that every one of us should know. Also please tell me in the comments sections what fact about WLAN you liked the most and why. I would love to hear from you. Thanks for reading the post and also share this post with your friends and family.
