802.11b – the one that actually took off

this one hit different. officially known as IEEE Std 802.11b-1999, it showed up the same year as 11a – but unlike its faster sibling, 11b made the real splash. dropped in '99, confirmed again in 2003, and patched up a bit in 2001 with a corrigendum. not flashy, but it got the job done.

no special Task Group name here either – just “Amendment 2” by the IEEE 802.11 working group. but who cares what it was called – this thing took Wi-Fi mainstream.

so what did it do? it kept things simple and compatible by sticking to the 2.4 GHz band. no 5 GHz fanciness here. the big win was speed – it added 5.5 and 11 Mbps data rates to the old 1 and 2 Mbps setup from the original standard. enough to make wireless feel less like a toy and more like a legit Ethernet replacement.

tech-wise, 11b ran on DSSS – Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum. boring but reliable. and it used a modulation scheme called Complementary Code Keying (CCK), which let it squeeze out those higher speeds without needing wider channels or crazy new hardware. chipping rate? 11 MHz. solid match to the DSSS core. modulations? DBPSK for 1 Mbps, DQPSK for 2 Mbps, then CCK kicked in for the 5.5 and 11 Mbps modes.

802.11b was everywhere – laptops, routers, coffee shops, you name it. sure, it was slow by today’s standards, and the 2.4 GHz band got crowded fast, but it gave Wi-Fi its first real foothold in the real world. and yeah, it got merged into the 802.11-2007 big revision, just like 11a, and carried through into later ones like 2012, 2016, and 2020.

802.11b wasn’t bleeding-edge – it was the one people actually used. and it changed everything.