Take This World Wi-Fi Day Quiz and Get Smart About Wi-Fi
By William Chow, Mobolize | CTO and Co-Founder
Wi-Fi is pervasive today because it’s often the fastest way to cruise the internet highway, with Wi-Fi already carrying more than 60% of the world’s internet traffic. With the coronavirus and sheltering in place still in many parts of the world, there are now 2x more people working from home, so the demand for Wi-Fi has never been higher.
Major broadband ISPs are reporting Wi-Fi traffic has increased by up to 40% in the last two months, thanks in large part to:
- 3x more teleconferencing, with Zoom and Microsoft Teams reporting 4-5x increase in meeting participants
- 2x more video streaming, and Netflix and Amazon were already the biggest bandwidth hogs on the internet!
But 1.75 billion citizens in the world’s richest countries remain unconnected, according to World Wi-Fi Day statistics. Many unconnected people live within urban areas in the Middle East and Asia Pacific, but many of the unconnected are in Europe and North America too. In New York City, almost 20% of the city’s population do not have access to a Wi-Fi connection, which is about 1.6 million people.
World Wi-Fi Day was organized by the Wireless Broadband Alliance under the leadership of the Connected City Advisory Board. The goal is to improve Wi-Fi availability in broadband-deprived areas with the help of the Wi-Fi industry, cities and governments. While today, there are many issues that are distancing people from each other, this goal of connecting everyone should bring us all together.
To really bring us together in a fun way, take our Second Annual Wi-Fi Quiz and learn some real treats about Wi-Fi. You can share the quiz during your daily virtual cocktail hour.
1. London is the most connected major global city (only 7% unconnected) but where is the free Wi-Fi network “buckinghampalace” located?
- A. This is the personal Wi-Fi the Queen uses at Buckingham Palace, of course
- B. Ham store in SoHo owned by Mr. Bucking
- C. The Buckingham Palace gift shop
- D. Not available any more as that was the name of Prince Harry’s security Wi-Fi network
2. Who predicted in 1929 that people would be able to communicate with each other wirelessly in an instant with devices that could fit inside a vest pocket?
- A. Eleanor Roosevelt
- B. Percy Julian
- C. Edith Wharton
- D. Nikola Tesla
3. What duo invented TCP/IP?
- A. Vint and Bob
- B. Kleinrock and Kline
- C. Will and Sam
- D. Thelma and Louise
4. In 1988, NCR and AT&T created the first Wi-Fi network to connect cash register systems. What was it called?
- A. Ca$h Connect
- B. WaveLAN
- C. NCRATTLan
- D. Arpanet
5. What is a Wi-Fi dead zone?
- A. Cemetery that doesn’t offer free Wi-Fi
- B. A Wi-Fi that requires you to login
- C. Areas of oceans and lakes that don’t have enough oxygen to support fish
- D. Edge of a Wi-Fi network where the signal is too weak to transmit data
6. How many radios does Wi-Fi support?
- A. One – additional antennas are just decorative
- B. Two – one to download data and one to upload data
- C. Four – in order to handle the 5G network
- D. Eight – because only eight is enough
7. What new “language” does Wi-Fi 6 speak that makes it faster than Wi-Fi 5?
- A.Internet Protocol
- B. 1024-QAM
- C. Memex
- D. French
8. How much faster overall is WiFi 6 over WiFi 5?
- A. 40% faster
- B. 2x faster
- C. 4x faster
- D. About the same but WiFi 6 can handle more devices on the network
For fun extra credit:
9. What is Babylonokia?
- A. The Wi-Fi version of Baby Shark – 🎼Babylonokia – doo doo doo doo doo doo🎼
- B. A clay tablet shaped by a mobile phone with keys and screen showing cuneiform script
- C. One of Elon Musk’s potential names for his new baby boy
- D. A city in the ancient kingdom of Babylonia
For even more fun extra credit, Question 2 listed Percy Julian as one of the potential answers. Although a chemist, he’s perhaps the greatest African American scientist that Americans don’t know about. He was a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs such as cortisone, steroids and birth control pills. Check out this hilarious video to learn about him.
Here are the answers to the quiz. Now you’re really ready for tonight’s virtual cocktail party as you show off your smarts about World Wi-Fi Day and beyond.
- C – The gift shop offers free Wi-Fi, a crowning achievement
- D – I’m surprised Elon Musk didn’t include Wi-Fi in his new son’s name
- A – Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in 1973 developed TCP/IP protocol of open architecture networking that enables computers and networks to communicate with one another freely
- B – WaveLAN which had a wireless networking speed of 1 to 2 Mbps
- D – smart mobile operators are working to solve the problem with a network bonding solution
- D – WiFi 6 bumps the number of spatial streams to 8, from 4 in WiFi 5
- B – While la langue d’internet est Internet Protocol, Wi-Fi specifically transmits 0s and 1s via radio waves using a scheme called Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM)
- C – Adding up higher QAM, more spatial streams and other WiFi 6 features gives us a >4x increase over WiFi 5
- B – Artwork by Karl Weingärtner in 2012 to represent the evolution of information transfer from the ancient world to the present. AltArchaeology-type groups promoted it on YouTube as an 800-year-old art find leading to some newspaper articles which later had to be corrected.
