# We use Wi-Fi every day to connect our devices to the internet, but how does it actually work? How do our devices communicate with the router and what makes Wi-Fi different from other types of wireless communication?
In: Technology
Wow, you went all out with the screaming font.
Humans talk to each other by pushing air back and forth. This movement of air is called sound. So we literally make sound waves that reach your recipients’ ears and it converts it into electricity and sends to their brains. This is the process of talking.
With Wi-Fi, our computers send messages to a radio transmitter (think mouth) which converts the message into a radio wave and sends it into the air. Your router has a radio antenna (think ear) that receives this radio wave and converts it into electricity and sends it on its way.
This is Wi-Fi and all radio communication in a nutshell.
Just as we speak English, Mandarin, Hindi and a million other human languages, Wi-Fi is one specific language that computers use to talk to Wi-Fi routers. It uses a specific range of radio frequency waves and a specific handshake of messages, specific message headers etc as defined in the Wi-Fi specification. This specification is equivalent to, say, an English grammar book or the Ashtadhyayi.
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