Printer Connect

Epson WiFi clients on newer printers still seem to have issues with verrtain "special" characters in the SSID (the wireless name), like apostrophe (') or hyphens (-) appears the Epson are standards-ignorant on these.

If in question, check with your product vendor, check the related device documentation, and don't overstress your good luck. If you find incompatibilities - like in the case of these Epson printers known causing problems with simple apostrophes ('), or simple hyphens (-).  Complain to the vendor support after identifying clear errors and mishaps please! Reconfiguring SSIDs on smaller, medium, and large networks can be a real pain!

The Wi-Fi Alliance (under the IEEE 802.11 standard) allows SSIDs to be up to 32 bytes (typically 32 characters) long and treats them as an opaque list of octets.

This gives you massive flexibility, but sticking to specific sets determines your compatibility with different devices.

Recommended & Compatible Characters

For universal compatibility with all Wi-Fi clients (including older smart home tech, IoT gadgets, and printers), it is best practice to stick to standard ASCII printable characters:

Letters: A-Z and a-z (case-sensitive)
Numbers: 0-9 Basic Punctuation:
Hyphens (-), underscores (_), and periods (.)
Spaces: Generally supported, though they can occasionally cause configuration issues with older devices.

Extended Characters & Special Symbols

Many modern routers and Wi-Fi Certified devices support UTF-8 encoding, which allows for:

Special Characters: !, @, #, $, %, etc.
Emojis: 👻 or 💩 are supported on many modern Android and modern router firmware. 

Characters to Avoid

Even if your router allows them, certain characters often cause connection crashes, pairing errors, or router-management bugs:

Certain Smart Home / IoT Devices: Devices like older wireless cameras, smart speakers, or Wi-Fi printers frequently fail to connect or crash if an SSID contains apostrophes ('), ampersands (&), or carets (^).

OS-Specific Bugs: Some extended symbols and syntax (like < or >) can break device configuration or cause OS network glitches.

Leading Special Characters: It is highly recommended never to start an SSID with !, #, or ; as it can confuse certain network stacks.If you are planning to name your network for home use, guest access, or setting it up for smart home devices, I can offer recommendations on naming conventions and best practices to avoid connectivity issues! 

Not every vendor has good QA or experienced beta testers. Netgear isn't bad on most apsects, but still shows issues in quality and usability - especially on certain lower-cost OEM-designed and OEM-manufactures devices.

JohnAZ5 wrote:

Last night I tried reducing the power on the 5g to 25%, unpluging the close Orbi and reconnecting the printer.  It worked, then I connectedthe close Orbi and chaged the 5g power to 100%,  This morning the printer was disconnected.

Explanations like these are fishy advice. Sometimes caused by wireless clients not configured to the appropriate regaulatory area of the user location, the router, the WIFi APs, ... A wireless client supporting e.g. dual band, 2.4 and 5 GHz shopuld connect flawless to every wireless base station also supporting 2.4 and 5 GHz, even if the same SSID, the same security is set on both or all radios, like in the case of Netgear Mesh systems, or business grade wireless infrastructures supporting seamless roaming.

Under typical wireless situations, lower distances will be covered by 5 GHz, longer distances can use 2.4 GHz. In case a wireless client does not reliably work on either band, talk to the vendor support.