What is Wifi technology? How does it work?

- Wifi has emerged as a very popular technology. 

- This technology has enabled the electronic devices to exchange information between them and to share the internet connection without using any cables or wires. 

- It is a wireless technology. 

- This technology works with the help of the radio waves. 

- The Wifi is defined as a WLAN (wireless local area network) product by the wifi alliance that is based on the standards defined by IEEE (802.11 standards). 

- Most of the WLANs are based upon these standards only and so this technology has been named as wifi which is the synonymous with the term WLAN. 

- The wifi-certified trademark might be used by only those wifi products which have the complete certification for the wifi alliance inter-operability. 

- A number of devices now use wifi such as the PCs, smart phones, video game consoles, digital cameras, digital audio players, tablet computers and so on. 

- All these devices can connect to the network and access internet by means of a wireless network access point. 

- Such an access point is more commonly known as a ‘hotspot’. 

- The range of an access point is up to 20 m. 

- But it has a much greater range outside.  

- An access point can be installed in a single room or in an area of many square miles. 

- This can be achieved by using a number of overlapping access points. 

- However, the security of the wifi is less compared to the wired connections for example Internet.

- This is so because a physical connection is not required by an intruder. 

- The web pages using SSL have security but the intruders can easily access the non-encrypted files on the internet. 

- It is because of this, that the various encryption technologies have been adopted by the wifi. 

- The earlier WEP encryption was weak and so was easy to break.

- Later, came the higher quality protocols such as the WPA2 and WPA. 

- The WPS or the wifi protected set up was an optional feature that was added in the year of 2007. 

- This option a very serious flaw which is that it allowed the recovery of the password of the router by an attacker.

- The certification and the test plan has been updated by the wifi alliance for ensuring that there is resistance against attacks in all the devices that have been newly certified.

- For connecting to a wifi LAN, a wireless network interface controller has to be incorporated in to the computer system.

- This combination of the interface controller and the computer is often called as the station. 

- The same radio frequency communication channel is shared by all the stations.

- Also, all the stations receive any transmission on this channel. 

- Also, the user is not informed of the fact that the data was delivered to the recipient and so is termed as the ‘best–effort delivery mechanism’. 

- For transmitting the data packets, a carrier wave is used. 

- These data packets are commonly known as the ‘Ethernet frames’. 

- Each station regularly tunes in to the radio frequency channel for picking up the transmissions that are available. 

- A device that is wifi enabled can connect to the network if it lies in the range of the wireless network. 

- One condition is that the network should have been configured for permitting such a connection. 

- For providing coverage in a large area multiple hotspots are required. 

- For example, wireless mesh networks in London. 

- Through wifi, services can be provided in independent businesses, private homes, public spaces, high street chains and so on. 

- These hotspots have been set up either commercially or free of charge. 

- Free hotspots are provided at hotels, restaurants and airports.