"Wifi" refers to a family of wireless ([[RF]]) networking protocols under the IEEE standard 802.11a/b/g. Wifi is common in home networking, and also the various locations that offer a "wifi hotspot".

The name is a play on the word "hi-fi", a contraction of "high fidelity" which refers to the quality of sound produced by audio equipment.

== Security ==

There are a couple of different security schemes for wifi, largely due to the evolutionary nature of the technology (i.e. new standards replacing old). Most wifi access-points will support one or more of the following:

* Open - no encryption scheme. An open access point can be used by anyone, and any traffic through it should be considered unsafe i.e. don't do anything which requires a password through an open access point, even if it's one you control!

* WEP - wired-equivalent protection. WEP was introduced with 802.11b, an early wifi standard. It has since been proven to be fairly easy to crack, and probably shouldn't be used.

* WPA/WPA2 - "wifi protected access" - A secure encryption scheme designed to replace WEP. WPA can be run with an authentication server or using preshared keys (PSK), and can use different encryption algorithms including AES.

Some people think that locking down an access point based on MAC address is also secure, but with the right software it is trivial to change your apparent MAC address to look however you like. MAC address limiting is less secure than (the already extremely insecure) WEP.