Ennis was honored with a “Certificate of Appreciation” from IEEE in 1998 “in grateful acknowledgment of his outstanding contributions” to the development of the IEEE 802.11 standard, which has become known as Wi-Fi.
He was inducted into the Wi-Fi Alliance Hall of Fame with the 2021 “Quality of Service” award “recognizing exemplary service to the Wi-Fi industry through sustained leadership and impact”.
About Greg Ennis
author of Beyond Everywhere
For 25 years, until his retirement in 2016 as Vice President, Technology for the Wi-Fi Alliance, Greg Ennis was at the center of the Wi-Fi industry.
In 1993, Ennis and two co-authors developed the proposal that was voted in by the IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN standards committee to be the foundation for the standard, beating out nine competing proposals from IBM and others. He then served as Technical Editor for that IEEE standard, soon to be known as Wi-Fi.
In 1999 he helped to found the organization now known as the Wi-Fi Alliance (“the international network of companies that bring you Wi-Fi”) and from the very beginning held that organization’s chief technical leadership position until retiring in 2016. The Wi-Fi Alliance – which coined the term “Wi-Fi” in 1999 -- is now made up of over 800 companies from around the world, has certified over 80,000 products with test laboratories in seven countries, and the organization continues to shepherd both Wi-Fi’s technology evolution and market expansion. Today there are over 18 billion Wi-Fi devices used globally, and over 4 billion are sold annually.
Ennis’s wireless development work began in 1990 with the design of protocols used within large networks of handheld financial trading terminals. Prior to that he was designing radio-based systems for cable television data networks – essentially developing the very first cable modems -- while serving as Director of Engineering for Network Architecture at Sytek, an early leader in the LAN industry. At Sytek he developed the original NETBIOS protocols for IBM, establishing a key application interface still used today for LAN applications.
In the early 1980s he contributed to the early development of today’s internet protocols (TCP/IP) as a consultant to the “Protocol Standards Technical Panel” of the Defense Communications Agency, which had just taken over responsibility from ARPA for the management of ARPANET’s Internet protocol development.
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Ennis was asked to testify as an expert witness in numerous patent and trade secret misappropriation cases, involving technologies as varied as network-based antivirus software, digital telephone central office switching, and fiber-to-the-home. One of Ennis’s clients was awarded $365 million by a Texas jury.
Ennis has a Master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin (minor in computer science), and a second Master’s degree in computer engineering from Stanford University. Ennis graduated “With Great Distinction” from the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in mathematics.
Ennis has been the keynote speaker at technical conferences around the world, including China, Europe, and the US. For years, in his role as Vice President, Technology for the Wi-Fi Alliance he served as a primary technical spokesperson for the Wi-Fi industry.
Currently living with his wife Michalene in the beautiful Sierra foothill town of Mariposa, California (just outside Yosemite), Ennis is an accomplished jazz pianist, performing throughout the area with his classic piano trio. He is also a published poet.
AVAILABLE NOW! The story of how Wi-Fi became the world’s most beloved technology
Beyond Everywhere
by Greg Ennis
