The Wi-Fi Alliance is a non-profit organization that owns the Wi-Fi trademark. Manufacturers may use the trademark to brand products certified for Wi-Fi interoperability. History Early 802.11 products suffered from interoperability problems because the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) had no provision for testing equipment for compliance with its standards. In 1999, pioneers of a new, higher-speed variant endorsed the IEEE 802.11b specification to form the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) and branded the new technology Wi-Fi. The group of companies included 3Com, Aironet (acquired by Cisco), Harris Semiconductor (now Intersil), Lucent (was Alcatel-Lucent, then acquired by Nokia), Nokia and Symbol Technologies (now Zebra Technologies). The alliance lists Apple, Comcast, Samsung, Sony, LG, Intel, Dell, Broadcom, Cisco, Qualcomm, Motorola, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, and T-Mobile as key sponsors. The charter for this independent organization was to perform testing, certify interoperability of products, and to promote the technology. WECA renamed itself the Wi-Fi Alliance in 2002. It is based in Austin, Texas. Most producers of 802.11 equipment became members, and , the Wi-Fi Alliance included over 550 member companies. The Wi-Fi Alliance extended Wi-Fi beyond wireless local area network applications into point-to-point and personal area networking and enabled specific applications such as Miracast. Wi-Fi certification The Wi-Fi Alliance owns and controls the "Wi-Fi Certified" logo, a registered trademark, which is permitted only on equipment which has passed testing. Purchasers relying on that trademark may have greater chances of interoperation than otherwise. Testing involves not only radio and data format interoperability, but security protocols, as well as optional testing for quality of service and power management protocols. Wi-Fi Certified products have to demonstrate that they can perform well in networks with other Wi-Fi Certified products, running common applications, in situations similar to those encountered in everyday use. Certification employs 3 principles: Interoperability is the primary target of certification. Rigorous test cases are used to ensure that products from different equipment vendors can interoperate in a wide variety of configurations. Backward compatibility has to be preserved to allow for new equipment to work with existing gear. Backward compatibility protects investments in legacy Wi-Fi products and enables users to gradually upgrade and expand their networks. New certification programs allow newer technology and specifications come into the marketplace. These certification programs may be mandatory (e.g., WPA2) or optional (e.g., WMM). The Wi-Fi Alliance definition of interoperability demands that products have to show satisfactory performance