content: woah, hang on.  back up a bit there. Yes, obviously the trademark WiFi is supposed to hearken back to the days of 'hifi' stereo.   But that's just marketing.   Extremely successful marketing, for sure, but marketing.    Wireless LAN Communications have little need for 'fidelity'  Frames are just re-transmitted if they are botched, and there is a huge tolerance in what is accepted vs what is sent. "WiFi" a marketing decision that was made by the WiFi Alliance, which is the group that puts the little logos on the boxes you see in the big box stores. IEEE just creates standards.   They have nothing to do with marketing devices that adhere to their own standards. Now, maybe some of the engineers who worked on the standards also helped form the WECA (Later the WiFi Alliance) but I don't know the names nor do I care.  The groups are separate. IEEE 802.11 is a group of standards fo  2f4b  r wireless local area networks. 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, 802.11ac are common frameworks for communication on a particular frequency with certain features.  Some are compatible, others are not. The WiFi Alliance tests devices to verify inter-operability between different products and manufacturers based off the IEEE standards that were published before the term WiFi existed.  Want proof?  Go look at old wireless routers.  They don't say say wifi anywhere on the product or the box, because that term wasn't in use at the time. Go google the iconic wrt54g by linksys (back when they were owned by cisco, not the newer ones) They say 'wireless-g' indicating that they adhere to the IEEE802.11g standard.  Those came out less than a year before WiFi branding was everywhere. I didn't read this entire article, but the limited skimming I did all looks correct. http://www.economist.com/node/2724397