CHAPTER 1 GOING WIRELESS People access the Internet from many different places Families stream movies in their living rooms Students check their e-mail between classes Travelers read the news between flights at airports Before Wi-Fi information on the Internet was sent using wires or cables Wi-Fi networks allow people to share information across short distances without using wires 5
Tablets laptops and smartphones are only some of the devices that can use Wi-Fi People could use the Internet only on devices that plugged into these cables Wi-Fi uses radio waves instead of wires to send information This allows people to connect to the Internet on the go All they need is a device that can send and receive the radio waves The Federal Communications Commission FCC is a US government 6
agency It controls who can broadcast radio waves in the United States The FCC gives users licenses to use certain radio-wave bands In the FCC freed a few of the radio-wave bands People no longer needed a license to use these bands The bands were called junk bands A few companies began making devices that used the junk bands The devices could send and receive information But there was a problem The companies used different communication methods Devices made by one company could not communicate with devices made by a different company 7
