Wi-Fi Certified products must conform to certain standards of quality.
IEEE 802.11 is a set of media access control ( MAC ) and physical layer ( PHY ) specifications for implementing wireless local area network ( WLAN ) computer communication in the 900 MHz and 2.4 , 3.6 , 5 , and 60 GHz frequency bands . The base version of the standard was released in 1997 , and has had subsequent amendments . Wi-Fi or WiFi is a technology for wireless local area networking with devices based on the IEEE 802.11 standards . Wi-Fi is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance , which restricts the use of the term Wi-Fi Certified to products that successfully complete interoperability certification testing .