Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi)

Wi-Fi is a series of wireless networking standard published by the IEEE. The initial publication was in 1997 with 802.11 and new revisions have been published over the decades. The initial releases offered convenient wireless connectivity, but at slower rates than legacy Ethernet connections.

By the time 802.11n was published, Wi-Fi had become the ubiquitous means by which most users connect to the Internet. Work continued on the Wi-Fi series of standards, with a summary of those standards shown in the following table. Due to the confusion caused by the names of the standards among normal users, the Wi-Fi Alliance introduced "generation" names to make it easier for consumers to understand.

Wi-Fi stands for "Wireless Fidelity".

Generation	Year	Standard	Data Rates	Frequency
Wi-Fi 0	1997	802.11	2 Mbps	2.4 GHz
Wi-Fi 1	1999	802.11a	54 Mbps	5 GHz
Wi-Fi 2	1999	802.11b	11 Mbps	2.4 GHz
Wi-Fi 3	2003	802.11g	54 Mbps	2.4 GHz
Wi-Fi 4	2008	802.11n	600 Mbps	2.4 GHz
Wi-Fi 5	2014	802.11ac	433Mbps - 6.9 Gbps	5 GHz
Wi-Fi 6	2019	802.11ax	574Mbps - 9.6 Gbps	2.4/5/6 GHz
Wi-Fi 7	2024	802.11be	1.37Gbps - 46 Gbps	2.4/5/6 GHz
Wi-Fi 8	2028 (planned)	802.11bn	100 Gbps	2.4/5/6/7/42.5/71 GHz

Resources: Wi-Fi Alliance