The Wi-Fi Alliance was formed in 1999. It is a not for profit company and was the result of several companies joining together to provide the best possible experience with wireless products by offering vendor neutral certifications for products that met their standards for interoperability.
Today the Wifi Alliance is made up of over 600 companies that continue to push technology farther and farther. Since its formation in 1999 the Wifi Alliance has certified 18000 different devices that have met the standards of the certifications. To date the Wifi-Alliacne has 8 certifications for devices to acheive. The certifications covereverything from security to sharing media between devices.
The WIfi Alliance is responsible for WiFi Protected Access. The Wifi Alliance saw the shortcomings of WEP and released WPA to address some of these short comings. WPA was much more secure then WEP but with WPA came WPS. WPS, Wifi protected setup effectively bypasses the WPA certification. This opens the network back up to vulnerabilities. However the feature doesn’t have to be employed in the network and there is no negative side effect of not using it. In order for a device to carry the WIfi Certified seal the device has to support WPA2.
Currently the WIfi Alliance has joined with Wi Gig to deliver multi- gigabit speeds in the 60 GHz band. The Wi-Gig certification is expected to be ready by 2015.
