What is Wifi? What Wi-Fi standards are there?

Wireless connections on phones, computers, televisions are playing an important role in our lives, the most common is wifi, so what is wifi? This article will give you some information about current wifi standards.

What is Wifi?

Wifi stands for Wireless Fidelity which is a wireless internet access system . This type of radio waves is similar to telephone, television, and radio waves.

Wifi is an indispensable connection tool on phones, laptops, tablets and some other smart devices such as smartwatches.

Working principle of Wifi network

To create a Wifi connection , it is necessary to have a Router (transceiver) :

This router takes information from the Internet over a wired connection and converts it to a radio signal and sends it out.

– The wireless adapter (adapter) on mobile devices receives this signal and then decodes it into the necessary data.

This process can be done in reverse, the Router receives the radio signals from the Adapter and decodes them and sends them over the Internet.

Some current Wifi connection standards

– 802.11 standards :

In 1997, IEEE introduced the first wireless networking standard and named it 802.11. At that time, the maximum support speed of this network was only 2 Mbps with the 2.4GHz band .

– 802.11b standard :

In July 1999, the 802.11b standard was born and supports speeds up to 11Mbps . This standard also operates in the 2.4GHz band , so it is also very susceptible to interference from other electronic devices.

– 802.11a standard :

In parallel with the development of the b standard, the 802.11a standard broadcasts at a higher frequency of 5GHz to avoid interference from other devices . The processing speed of the standard reaches 54 Mbps , but this standard is difficult to penetrate walls and its price is a bit high.

– 802.11g standard :

The 802.11g standard is somewhat more than the b standard, but it also operates at 2.4GHz , so it is still susceptible to interference. This standard can handle speeds up to 54 Mbps.

– 802.11n standard :

Launched in 2009 and is the most popular standard today thanks to its superiority to standards b and g. The 802.11n connection standard supports a maximum speed of up to 300Mbps , which can operate on both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands.

This connection standard has been gradually replacing the 802.11g standard with larger broadcast range, higher speed and reasonable price.

– 802.11ac standard :

A standard introduced by IEEE in early 2013, operating in the 5 GHz band . The ac standard can bring users the highest speed experience up to 1730 Mpbs.

Due to the high cost problem, the signal transmitters for this standard are not popular, leading to these devices having limited optimization due to the transmitter.

– 802.11ad standard:

Introduced in 2014, the 802.11ad wifi standard supports bandwidth up to 70 Gbps and operates in the 60GHz band . The downside of this standard is that signal waves can hardly penetrate walls , which means that as long as the Router is out of sight, the device will no longer be able to connect to Wifi.

– 802.11ax standard:

Wi-Fi 6 is the latest update to the wireless networking standard. Wi-Fi 6 is based on the IEEE 802.11ax standard, with faster speeds, greater capacity, and improved energy efficiency than previous wireless connections. This new name Wifi 6 will be officially applied from 2019.

– Wifi Hotspot:

In addition to the above connection standards, each mobile device can automatically emit Wifi waves for other devices . In other words, the mobile device can be seen as a router.

Summary of today’s popular Wifi standards:

Which standard is commonly used in Vietnam?

All WiFi standards in Vietnam are used. However, the two most popular standards today are 802.11g and 802.11n and the most used is still 802.11n, operating in two bands of 2.4GHz and 5GHz.

Today, a number of new devices manufactured in Vietnam have used 802.11ac standards, but this number is not much (although it is widely used in developed countries), partly because it is not suitable for 802.11ac standards. Network infrastructure is still limited in our country today.

With the basic summary of current wifi standards, hopefully help you better understand wifi as well as their advantages and disadvantages for comparison and choice when using.