The IEEE LAN/MAN Standards Committee maintains and governs the IEEE 802 specification(s). The original 802.11 goal was to provide a link layer protocol for wireless networking. This evolved from the 802.11 base specification to 802.11ac in 2013. Since then, the working group has focused on other areas, as the following chart illustrates. Specific 802.11 variants have been examined for use cases and segments such as low power/low bandwidth IoT interconnect (802.11ah), vehicle-to-vehicle communication (802.11p), reuse of television analog RF space (802.11af), extreme bandwidth near meter communication for audio/video (802.11ad), and of course the follow-on to the 802.11ac standard (802.11ax). 

The new variants are designed for different areas of the RF spectrum or to reduce latency and improve safety for vehicular emergencies. The following table should reflect the tradeoffs between range, frequency, and power. We will cover aspects in the chart such as modulation, MIMO streams, and frequency usage later in this section.