Wifi, also spelled as WiFi or Wi-Fi, is a wireless local area technology that lets electronic devices to exchange various data or connect to Internet with the help of 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz SHF radio waves. The term itself is a trademark and is played on audiophile term – Hi-Fi. According to WiFi alliance, WiFi can be designed as “wireless local area network (WLAN) products that are based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) 802.11 standards". Yet, since most of the modern WLANS are dependent on these standards, WiFi is used in English as WLAN’s synonym. WiFi Alliance certification is essential for all the products it they wish to use the trademark of WiFi Certified.
Several devices use WiFi, for an instance – personal computers, smartphones, video games consoles, digital cameras, digital audio players and tablet computers as well. These devices can connect to a particular network resource like the Internet through an access point of wireless network. Such a point (also known as hotspot) has a wide range of around 20 meters (or 66 feet) indoors and a larger range outdoors. The coverage of hotspot may consist of an area which is as small as a single room having the radio waves blocked by walls or as large as several square kilometers achieved with the help of several overlapping access points within the range.
If two devices wish to communicate, for an instance, if a device needs to send information to have a printout from another device, it needs to be connected to local network to pass the information without wires.
WiFi is far less secure than the connections with wires (like Ethernet) since an intruder does not need any physical connection to connect to the internet. SSL using web pages are safe but the unencrypted internet access can be detected by anyone. As a result, WiFi has now adopted several encryption technologies. Earlier, WEP proved to be easy to be broken. Later, WPA, WPA2, which are higher quality protocols, were added. Optional feature was brought into the market in 2007, called WiFi Protected Setup (WPS), which was detected with a serious flow that let an attacker recover the password of router. WiFi Alliance has, since then, updated its test plan as well as certification program to make sure that all the newly certified devices are able to avoid attacks and protect users.