• Question: How does wi-fi work?

    Asked by 362bera28 to Colin, John, Kevin, Shikha, Triona on 12 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Kevin Motherway

      Kevin Motherway answered on 12 Nov 2014:


      all computers work by coveting information into 1’s and 0’s like 110001011001100101000011. This is really good as its so simple and you know that you should only get 1’s and 0’s and anything else is rubbish to be ignored. that why digital TV and Radio is so much more High Def than traditional Analogue signals that could be full of al sorts of fuzz and interference that ended up on your screen or radio. WiFi is simply a dedicted set of radio frequencies designed for data transfer on a local network. So you type an email and hit send. its converted into 1’s ‘and 0’s in your computer it goes to the WiFi chip and is converted into radio signals that correspond to the predictable 1’s ‘and 0’s pattern and is broadcast. The signal is picked up by the aerials on the Wifi router and it gets converted back into 1’s ‘and 0’s and is sent via the cable/ phone line out into the internet: and all this happens at the speed of light! the whole process is reversed for when you download (1’s ‘and 0’s from internet to router to broadcast signal to the wifi chip on your computer to 1’s ‘and 0’s to the youtube video on your screen) . Where things slow down is where the phone companies exchanges and servers get overloaded and your 1’s ‘and 0’s get stuck in the queue in a buffer! AAAAAAGH!!!!

    • Photo: Shikha Sharma

      Shikha Sharma answered on 13 Nov 2014:


      Hi 362bera28,
      Wi-fi technology is based on radio waves. These radio signals transmitted from Wi-Fi antennas are picked up by WiFi receivers, such as computers and cell phones.
      It found early success in July 1999, when Apple built in Wi-Fi as an option on iBook computers, calling it AirPort. Its shortcoming is that it only works in close range because it’s dependent on radio waves. That’s why now we prefer 3G 🙂

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