Telecom Made Simple: The Advantages of Wi-Fi

Until now, we've looked at why voice is interesting and what makes it work over a network, but we haven't yet examined the technologies that truly make voice mobile. The advantage of mobile voice, when working properly, is that the elements of the underlying network fade away, and user sees only a familiar phone, in a mobile package. Of course, this requires cutting the cord, allowing users to make or receive calls from anywhere. So that we can understand how and why an unwired network is able to make the elements of the network disappear to the user, so to speak, we need to dive deeper and understand what the unwired network is made of.

Wi-Fi, the wireless local area networking technology based on the work from the standards branch of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, uses the IEEE 802.11 standard to allow portable mobile devices to connect to each other over the air, transmitting IP-based data as if they were connected directly with a cable.

But being wireless alone does not explain why Wi-Fi has become the primary wireless technology for both consumer- and enterprise-owned networks. Wi-Fi technology has a number of advantages that make it the obvious choice for wireless data, and for many circumstances, for mobile voice as well.

Almost everywhere, the term Wi-Fi is now used to refer to the networking technology based on the IEEE 802.11 standard. There are subtle differences, however, between the two terms.

The term Wi-Fi is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance, a nonprofit industry organization made up of nearly all of the equipment providers manufacturing IEEE 802.11 -based devices: chipset vendors, consumer and enterprise access point vendors, computer manufacturers, and so on. The Wi-Fi Alliance exists for two reasons: to promote the use of Wi-Fi certified technology throughout the industry and within the press, and to ensure that wireless devices based on 802.11 work together. The term Wi-Fi, and the accompanying logo, can be used only for products that have passed the Wi-Fi Alliance's certification programs.

We'll discuss the Wi-Fi Alliance more later, and where the Wi-Fi Alliance's certification programs diverge from the IEEE 802.11 standard. In the meantime, remember that 802.11 and Wi-Fi mean almost the same thing.