802.11
The IEEE committee/standards family for wireless LANs — the engineering name behind the brand 'Wi-Fi'; amendments become a, g, n, ac, ax, be.
Access point (AP)
Any radio that lets Wi-Fi clients join a network; your router's built-in AP is just an access point that also routes.
Adaptive Wi-Fi
Phone feature (Android's 'Switch to mobile data', iOS's 'Wi-Fi Assist') that abandons Wi-Fi for cellular when quality drops.
Band
The radio neighborhood Wi-Fi uses — 2.4 GHz (far, crowded), 5 GHz (fast, moderate reach), 6 GHz (widest, newest, shortest reach).
Band steering
Router nudging dual-band clients onto the less-loaded band under a single network name.
Beamforming
Shaping transmitted signal toward a specific client instead of spraying evenly; standard since Wi-Fi 5.
BSSID
The MAC address of a specific access-point radio — same SSID, different BSSID is how your phone knows it moved between mesh nodes.
Captive portal
The web login page that hotels and cafés force before granting internet; famous for breaking on phones with Private DNS or no browser open.
dBm
The negative-number signal-strength unit; closer to zero means stronger. -50 excellent, -70 flaky, -85 gone.
DFS
'Dynamic Frequency Selection' — the rule that Wi-Fi vacates certain 5 GHz channels when radar (weather/air traffic) is detected.
DHCP
The router service handing out local IP addresses to joining devices.
EasyMesh
Wi-Fi Alliance standard for multi-unit mesh networking across brands; adoption partial — same-brand mesh still works best.
Firmware
The router's operating system; keep it updated — the most neglected security control in networking.
Mbps / Gbps
Speed units — megabits (1/8 of a megabyte) per second; both router spec sums and speed tests use bits, so divide by 8 for file speeds.
Mesh
Multiple coordinated access points acting as one roaming network; wireless backhaul between nodes, or wired when you can lay the cable.
MIMO
'Multiple In, Multiple Out' — multiple antennas sending independent data streams simultaneously; the reason Wi-Fi 4 and beyond jumped.
MoCA
Ethernet-over-TV-coax adapters — wired backhaul using existing house wiring when cat5 isn't available.
OFDMA
Wi-Fi 6's upgrade to how transmissions are sliced — one broadcast serves multiple clients at once, the fix for device-dense homes.
QoS
'Quality of Service' — prioritizing latency-sensitive traffic (calls, games) over bulk downloads on a congested link.
RSSI
Radio signal strength indicator, reported in dBm — the number behind the triangle bars.
SSID
The network name your device joins; one SSID can span multiple bands and access points.
MU-MIMO
MIMO across multiple clients at once (Wi-Fi 5/6), an airtime multiplier for many-device homes.
WEP / WPA / WPA2 / WPA3
The Wi-Fi security generations in order of age: WEP (broken) and original WPA are dead ends; WPA2 remains the compat baseline; WPA3 is current best practice, ideally in 'transition' mode alongside WPA2.
Wi-Fi Alliance / Wi-Fi CERTIFIED
The industry body that owns the trademark and the interoperability certification logo on boxes.
Wi-Fi 4/5/6/6E/7
Consumer names for 802.11n/ac/ax/ax-in-6GHz/be — generations, each faster and better with crowds than the last.
WAN / LAN
Router's two faces: WAN looks toward the internet (ISP), LAN toward your devices.
WPS
Push-button pairing with a known-design flaw; turn it off in the admin page.