2023-04-17
The story of the creation of Wi-Fi, an epic journey of turning complexity into simplicity.
Younger readers may not even remember when the internet was a technology of wires, cables, and plugs. Wi-Fi connectivity has become so ubiquitous that we don’t even think about it, but as this book shows, it was a long haul to get there. Ennis was at the center of it, first as one of the authors of the technical proposal that became the foundation for Wi-Fi systems and later as the vice president of technology for the Wi-Fi Alliance, the industry association that handles certification and compliance issues. The seed for it was a project to create a system for the Chicago Board of Trade, known for its chaos and corruption. Ennis and his associates were faced with a range of technical and regulatory restrictions. However, once the local area network was built, they could see the potential for expansion and began working on rules to allow for compatibility of hardware and software. The outcome, after much pushing and shoving within the emerging field, was a set of standards known as IEEE 802.11. Going global presented new challenges, but the standards eventually caught on, and the introduction of mobile phone connectivity and video streaming cemented the place of Wi-Fi. Ennis explains all this with the authority of an insider and largely avoids the trap of jargon. He estimates that there are currently 18 billion devices using Wi-Fi, but with a solid set of protocols in place, he sees no limits to growth. “The economic value of Wi-Fi to the world…is expected to be nearly $5 trillion by 2025,” he writes. “More than four billion new Wi-Fi devices are sold every year. The likelihood that Wi-Fi will be replaced anytime soon is very small indeed.”
An accessible account of how Wi-Fi tech became a crucial part of our work, society, and lives.
