Wi-Fi access points are the small radios, usually fixed to the ceiling, that laptops and phones in an office connect to. Each access point turns the wired office network into a wireless one. A large office has dozens or hundreds of access points, each covering one part of a floor.
Why not use one big router, as in a home? A home has a few devices. An office floor may have 400 laptops and phones, and each access point can serve only a limited number of devices well. So the IT team places many access points, each set to a different radio channel, so that neighbouring access points do not interfere with each other. A home router is a different product, described in Wi-Fi routers and mesh systems.
Each access point is connected by one network cable to an enterprise switch. The same cable usually carries electricity too, so no power socket is needed on the ceiling. This is called power over Ethernet, or PoE.
Take, for example, the central library of an engineering college in Warangal during exam week. About 600 students sit in the reading hall with laptops and phones. The hall has 12 access points, so each one serves about 50 devices. A student walks from the reading hall to the reference section. His laptop moves out of range of one access point and connects to the next. Both access points belong to the same network, so his video lecture keeps playing. This is called roaming.
The access points also keep groups of users apart. The college broadcasts three Wi-Fi network names from the same access points: one for staff, one for students and one for visitors. Visitors reach only the internet. They cannot reach the server that holds exam results. Before a laptop joins the staff network, network access control (NAC) checks whether it is a known college device.
Modern access points use three radio bands. The 2.4 GHz band reaches furthest but is crowded. The 5 GHz band is faster. The 6 GHz band is the newest, and it is fastest over short distances. In India, the government allowed Wi-Fi in the lower part of the 6 GHz band in January 2026, mainly for indoor access points. The newest Wi-Fi standards are called Wi-Fi 6, 6E and 7. Inside each laptop, a Wi-Fi chip handles the laptop's side of the connection.
A college with hundreds of access points cannot set up each one by hand. So the IT team manages them all from one controller, or from a cloud dashboard. The dashboard shows which access points are overloaded and which devices have a weak signal. Each device that joins then gets its address from the DDI system.