4 Things You Didn’t Know About WIFI and the Internet

Although there are arguments to be made for the internet slowly turning us into slaves to technology, for the most part, broadband and the internet has been a truly remarkable invention that has revolutionized modern life as we know it today. Without the internet, you wouldn’t be reading this fun article today.

Without the internet, you wouldn’t be able to read your friend’s pointless statuses on social media, or watch funny videos of people slipping over when you’re supposed to be working. On a more serious note, without the internet, life as we know it today would come grinding to a screeching halt. We owe a lot to the internet, but are you a self-proclaimed ‘internet buff’? Unless you already know these fun facts that we’re about to share with you, we’re going to recommend that you hold off on referring to yourself as an internet buff just yet. Here are 4 things you didn’t know about WIFI and the internet.

WIFI doesn’t stand for anything

Some of you reading this article will now be getting pretty hot under the collar, as the general belief is that WIFI actually stands for ‘Wireless-Fidelity’. That, however, is not the case. An early WIFI advertising slogan incorrectly stated that WIFI did indeed stand for ‘wireless fidelity’ and things took off from there. The truth however, is that WIFI doesn’t really stand for anything. It’s just a fun-sounding technical term used in the tech-industry.

The internet is not as new as you think

If you’re like us, you probably connected to the internet sometime in the mid to late nineties, as that is when the world really jumped on board the whole internet saga. The internet, however, was not invented in the nineties at all, it was actually created much earlier than that, way back in 1966 in fact.

The internet is water-based

Water and electricity generally don’t mix, but in the case of the internet, this is an exception. You see, the internet works thanks to a series of underwater ‘submarine communications cables’ which are laid underwater on the sea bed between various stations located on land. In the past, the internet has been disrupted thanks to these cables sustaining damage from numerous things, including ship anchors, and natural disasters such as earthquakes.

Broadband gets its name from physics

Nowadays, all households get their internet connectivity thanks to broadband. But what precisely is broadband? Well, broadband is a term used in the world of physics, to describe a form of radiation which gives off a ‘broad band’ (see what we mean?) of continuous frequencies. Technically speaking, the sun is a form of broadband, although don’t worry, we’re confident that the sun isn’t in fact a giant glowing broadband internet router that some superior alien species forgot to switch off. Or are we?