Jeff Duntemanns Drive-By Wi-Fi Guide

The 'Wi-Fi' logo is something like the 'Intel Inside' stickers you used to see a lot on personal computers. (I think they dropped them eventually because nobody really cared what was inside as long as it ran Windows. 'Windows Inside' would have made more sense.) The idea is that a product with the 'Wi-Fi' logo on it could be trusted to 'talk' to any other product bearing the Wi-Fi logo. Consumers wouldn't have to read technical specifications to gather parts for a wireless network. If it was all Wi-Fi, it would work. Thus the right to carry the Wi-Fi logo became something that no 802.11b wireless networking manufacturer could do without.

Getting the logo means having a product tested for Wi-Fi compatibility and adherence to the Wi-Fi standard. To submit a product for testing, a vendor must first join the Wi-Fi Alliance, which used to be called WECA (Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance). Membership fees are not cheap (currently $20,000 per year) and support the testing process and other Alliance overhead. Furthermore, it costs $15,000 per product to have a product tested for Wi-Fi logo compliance. Testing turnaround is fairly quick-currently about one month.

Products are tested using NetIQ's Windows-based Chariot network testing utility while connected to a standard Ethernet wired network under typical wireless operating conditions. Chariot emulates typical network application traffic, and records network throughput, errors, and other parameters. Products are given a pass/fail grade based on testing, which qualifies (or excludes) a product from using the Wi-Fi logo.

Wi-Fi5 and Logo Confusion

The term 'Wi-Fi' originally applied only to devices adhering to the 802.11b standard-not 802.11a or any of the other flavors of 802.11. Early in 2002, the Wi-Fi Alliance had devised a separate logo program for 802.11a compatibility, and called it 'WiFi5.' The '5' indicated the 5 GHz band, where 802.11a wireless networking operates. By October 2002, after some focus group failures, the Wi-Fi Alliance decided to scotch the term 'Wi-Fi5' as confusing. You may still hear it from time to time and read it in publications written while it was current.

Currently, the Alliance is treating both 802.11b and 802.11a as 'Wi-Fi,' and special annotations on the logo will indicate which band the equipment in the labeled box is compatible with. 802.11b and 802.11a are not compatible and cannot communicate one with the other. The two technologies operate on vastly different frequencies using different modulation technologies. However, it's possible to build separate 802.11a and 802.11b subsystems into a single wireless networking appliance, and these 'dual mode' products began to appear on the market toward the end of 2002. Once it became clear that dual-mode equipment would succeed in the market, the sense of a single-logo program won out.