When was Wi-Fi invented?

Wi-Fi builds on decades of radio research, but the key standard, known as IEEE 802.11, was released in 1997 and allowed speeds of about 2 megabits per second. An important patent for making wireless networks fast and reliable came from Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, where a team led by John O’Sullivan worked on the technology in the early 1990s. In 1999 an industry group now called the Wi-Fi Alliance formed and adopted the catchy name Wi-Fi, along with the faster 802.11b standard at 11 Mbps. Apple’s iBook laptop that year was among the first mainstream computers with built-in wireless networking. Modern Wi-Fi 7 can in theory reach speeds tens of thousands of times faster than the original.