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Forum Discussion
Still use WPA2 when Orbi is using WPA3 with old wifi devices?
Hello,
Can I use still connect old wifi devices that can't do WPA2 if I set my updated Orbi 753's wifi security to WPA3?
Or do I have to use WPA2? Thank you for reading and hopefully answering soon. 🙂
8 Replies
WPA3 is supposed to be backwards compatible but usage has shown that not all are.
I turned on strict wpa3 and only had 1 device that didn't work. So I used mixed wap2/wpa3 mode.
Try it and see if they all connect. You might be fortunate and have all your devices work fine.
Unfortunately Orbi 7 and 8 haven't been given mixed mode yet. WPA3 is only compatible with WPA3 supporting devices. It's not backwards compatible with WPA2. WPA2 and WPA3 mixed modes have to be implemented and configured on routers first. The 9 series Orbi supports mixed modes. The 8 series had mixed mode early on but NG had to remove it due to bad operations in the WPA3 core framework. Hoping NG will bring mixed mode back to 7 and 8 series.
ant wrote:
Hello,
Can I use still connect old wifi devices that can't do WPA2 if I set my updated Orbi 753's wifi security to WPA3?
Or do I have to use WPA2? Thank you for reading and hopefully answering soon. 🙂
My understanding of wpa3 (could be wrong) was that there is a transition period where some wpa2 devices will still connection as long as the manufacturer included the updates to allow it. But that it'll be pulled for strict wpa3 devices at some point. If the device was made before the wpa3 code was released so device makers could update their wpa2 device, then it might not work.
Again, my testing has had my wpa2 devices connect to wpa3 network where most worked. And that wasn't using mixed mode.
Possible device Mfrs had made some improvements. This would have to come from the WPA community and the devices Mfr side though. And with the bazillion devices out there, hard to say. Hoping for the sake of making things easier, would be great if NG just implemented Mixed modes on there routers.
