Certification Programs

Since 2000, the Wi-Fi Alliance has worked with our members to certify more than 4,000 Wi-Fi products. Through comprehensive testing, the Wi-Fi Alliance certification program ensures that wireless local area networking (WLAN) products from multiple manufacturers work with each other.

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ leads to improved user-experience, higher customer satisfaction rates, fewer support calls and product returns, reduced costs, and the interoperability at Wi-Fi ZONES™. As a result, the Wi-Fi Alliance Certification programs have been a catalyst for the rapid adoption of Wi-Fi products in homes, offices and public access locations around the world.

Find out more about the Wi-Fi Alliance approach to certification.

 

Our certification programs cover the following categories:

Mandatory programs

  • Wi-Fi products based on IEEE radio standards - 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g in single, dual mode (802.11b and 802.11g) or multi-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) products. Now also required by CTIA for Wi-Fi enabled handsets seeking CTIA certification.

  • Wi-Fi wireless network security - WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access™) and WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) offer government-grade security mechanisms for personal and enterprise.

  • EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) - An authentication mechanism used to validate the identity of network devices (for enterprise devices).

Optional programs

  • Next-generation Wi-Fi – support for the IEEE 802.11n draft 2.0 radio standard.

  • Set-up of security features - Wi-Fi Protected Setup™ facilitates easy set-up of security using a Personal Identification Number (PIN) or a button located on the Wi-Fi device.
  • Support for multimedia content over Wi-Fi networks - WMM® (Wi-Fi Multimedia™) enables Wi-Fi networks to prioritize traffic generated by different applications, using Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms.
  • Power savings for multimedia content over Wi-Fi networks - WMM Power Save helps conserve battery life while using voice and multimedia applications by managing the time the device spends in sleep mode. (In recent testing, showed 37 - 73% power savings versus legacy power save mechanisms.)
  • For converged devices with both Wi-Fi and cellular technology - provides detailed information about the performance of the Wi-Fi radio in a converged handset, as well as how the cellular and Wi-Fi radios interact with one another. Now mandatory for Wi-Fi enabled handsets seeking CTIA certification.

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED tests are conducted by 12 independent laboratories in eight countries. Learn more about our Authorized Test Laboratories.