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802.11 technology has its origins in a 1985 ruling by the US Federal Communications Commission that released the ISM band for unlicensed use. In 1991, NCR Corporation with AT&T Corporation invented the precursor to 802.11 intended for use in cashier systems. The first wireless products were under the name WaveLAN.

Vic Hayes has been called the "father of Wi-Fi" by some, due to his involvement in negotiating the initial standards within the IEEE while chairing the workgroup.

A large number of patents by many companies are used in 802.11 standard. In 1992 and 1996, Australian organization CSIRO obtained patents for a method later used in Wi-Fi to "unsmear" the signal. In April 2009, 14 tech companies agreed to pay CSIRO $250 million for infringements on CSIRO patents.This led to Wi-Fi being attributed as an Australian invention, though this has been the subject of some controversy. CSIRO won a further $220 million settlement for Wi-Fi patent infringements in 2012 with global firms in the United States required to pay the CSIRO licensing rights estimated to be worth an additional $1 billion in royalties.

In 1999, the Wi-Fi Alliance was formed as a trade association to hold the Wi-Fi trademark under which most products are sold.

The key technologies behind Wi-Fi were developed by the radioastronomer John O'Sullivan as a by-product in a research project, "a failed experiment to detect exploding mini black holes the size of an atomic particle".

The Name

The term Wi-Fi, commercially used at least as early as August 2000, was coined by a brand-consulting firm called Interbrand Corporation. The Wi-Fi Alliance had hired Interbrand to determine a name that was "a little catchier than 'IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence'".Belanger also stated that Interbrand invented Wi-Fi as a play on words with Hi-Fi (high fidelity), and also created the Wi-Fi logo.

The Wi-Fi Alliance initially used the advertising slogan, "The Standard for Wireless Fidelity",for Wi-Fi but later removed the phrase from their marketing. Despite this, some documents from the Alliance dated 2003 and 2004 still contain the term Wireless Fidelity.There was no official statement related to the dropping of the term.

The yin-yang Wi-Fi logo indicates the certification of a product for interoperability.

Non-Wi-Fi technologies intended for fixed points such as Motorola Canopy are usually described as fixed wireless. Alternative wireless technologies include mobile phone standards such as 2G,3G or 4G.

Wi-Fi certification

The IEEE does not test equipment for compliance with their standards. The non-profit Wi-Fi Alliance was formed in 1999 to fill this void — to establish and enforce standards for interoperability andbackward compatibility, and to promote wireless local-area-network technology. As of 2010, the Wi-Fi Alliance consisted of more than 375 companies from around the world.The Wi-Fi Alliance enforces the use of the Wi-Fi brand to technologies based on the IEEE 802.11 standards from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. This includes wireless local area network (WLAN) connections, device to device connectivity (such as Wi-Fi Peer to Peer aka Wi-Fi Direct), Personal area network (PAN), local area network (LAN) and even some limited wide area network (WAN) connections. Manufacturers with membership in the Wi-Fi Alliance, whose products pass the certification process, gain the right to mark those products with the Wi-Fi logo.

Specifically, the certification process requires conformance to the IEEE 802.11 radio standards, the WPA and WPA2 security standards, and the EAP authentication standard. Certification may optionally include tests of IEEE 802.11 draft standards, interaction with cellular-phone technology in converged devices, and features relating to security set-up, multimedia, and power-saving.

Not every Wi-Fi device is submitted for certification. The lack of Wi-Fi certification does not necessarily imply that a device is incompatible with other Wi-Fi devices. If it is compliant or partly compatible, the Wi-Fi Alliance may not object to its description as a Wi-Fi device though technically only certified devices are approved. Derivative terms, such as Super Wi-Fi, coined by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to describe proposed networking in the UHF TV band in the US, may or may not be sanctioned.