IEEE 802.11
family of IEEE wireless LAN standards
IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area network (LAN) technical standards, and specifies the set of medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer communication. The standard and amendments provide the basis for wireless network products using the Wi-Fi brand and are the world's most widely used wireless computer networking standards. IEEE 802.11 is used in most home and office networks to allow laptops, printers, smartphones, and other devices to communicate with each other and access the Internet without connecting wires.
The standards are created and maintained by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) LAN/MAN Standards Committee (IEEE 802). The base version of the standard was released in 1997 and has had subsequent amendments. While each amendment is officially revoked when it is incorporated in the latest version of the standard, the corporate world tends to market to the revisions because they concisely denote the capabilities of their products. As a result, in the marketplace, each revision tends to become its own standard. 802.11x is a shorthand for "any version of 802.11", to avoid confusion with "802.11" used specifically for the original 1997 version.
The IEEE 802.11 family uses various radio frequencies, including, but not limited to, 2.4-, 5-, 6-, and 60-GHz bands. Although IEEE 802.11 specifications list channels that might be used, the allowed radio frequency spectrum varies significantly by regulatory domain.
The public source identifies “IEEE 802.11” as family of IEEE wireless LAN standards. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around IEEE, family and wireless.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q193228. The Library of Congress control number is sh2003001289. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997.
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This entry incorporates text from “IEEE 802.11” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.