Wi-Fi is one of the great backward compatibility success stories

My home network is a small miracle of backward compatibility, slinging data across 60-plus devices that span five generations of Wi-Fi. Everything on it, from my iPhone 15 Pro all the way down to my Nintendo Wii, manages to connect to the internet, most of it wirelessly through my router, with shockingly few issues. That’s possible because of Wi-Fi’s essentially unbroken line of interoperability that stretches from its 1999 introduction in consumer products through today.

Wi-Fi devices do…