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Forum Discussion
RAXE500 - Security options for the 2.4Ghz/5GHz bands are a step backward, why?
I recently set up my new RAXE500 Nighthawk router, and noticed something odd in the Wireless Security options. With the RAX200, the Security options for the wireless bands included a choice of "WPA2-Personal + WPA3-Personal", allowing devices using either of those to connect. In the RAXE500's wireless config, This option is gone. I can choose "None", "WPA2", "WPA + WPA2", or "WPA3", but "WPA2 + WPA3" is not there. This seems like a big mistake. There are still lots of devices out there which can connect on the 5GHz band but do not support WPA3. As it stands right now, my only choice is to force all devices on that band to use WPA2, or enable WPA3 and prevent those older devices from being able to connect. Why does the RAXE500 have less useful security options than the RAX200?
When I asked @NETGEARhelpUS on Twitter about this, they said it WAS possible, but only included a link to the main product page for the RAXE500 router, without giving any hint as to how it could be done. So what's going on?
2 Replies
from my understanding wpa2 + wpa3 was found to be unsecure and basically pointless.
so it was removed in testing.
Not that wpa3 has been shown to be that secure. But the basics of wpa3 is it should be backwards compatible enough to support wpa2 devices.
I've got the raxe500 and my wpa2 devices haven't had an issue connecting to wpa3
Well it wasn't pointless for me. I have multiple devices in my home that support WPA2 but not WPA3. When I was using my RAX200 and had "WPA2 + WPA3" set for the security option, these devices could connect just fine. Now on my RAXE500, they cannot connect when I have the security set to WPA3 only, I have to downgrade to WPA2 only, so the more advanced devices I have that are capable of WPA3 can't take advantage of it. Overall the RAXE500 is an impressive piece of hardware, but this step backwards in the wireless security options is disappointing.
