History
Early 802.11 products suffered from interoperability problems because the IEEE has no provision for testing equipment for compliance with its standards.
In 1999, pioneers of a new, higher speed (compared to the original 802.11) spec, endorsed the IEEE 802.11b specification to form the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) and branded the new technology Wi-Fi.
The group of companies included 3Com, Aironet (now Cisco), Harris Semiconductor (now Intersil), Lucent (now LSI Corporation), Symbol Technologies (now Motorola), and Nokia. As key sponsors, now the Alliance lists other companies, such as Apple inc. and Microsoft. The charter for this independent organization was to perform testing, certify interoperability of products, and to promote the technology.
WECA renamed itself the Wi-Fi Alliance in 2002. It is based in Austin, Texas.
Today, most producers of 802.11 equipment are members, and as of 2010, the Wi-Fi Alliance has over 375 member companies worldwide.
Read more about this topic: Wi-Fi Alliance
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)