Is there a way to report bug to Netgear firmware person here - without having to *pay* for support since my product is around 100 days old? If so, here goes (otherwise I guess the bug will just keep happening until someone either pays or happens to notice it within the first 90 days):
When encountering the initial "Zero Day" configuration where you enter things such as desired SSID and password, I have found that spaces typed in as part of the password are ignored. Using Chrome browser, choosing local web management, WPA2, etc.
Going into the full local web config later and clicking the icon to view password will show that spaces were ignored. Spaces can be added at that time (in the full web config).
The frustrating part is that there is no warning of limitation at the time you are typing spaces (or clicking to proceed) in the Zero Day. So you have to realize the problem on your own, then you learn to log in and add the spaces.
Good find - thank you for reporting! Interesting would be the firmware version which was installed when the issue happend.
Of course you can report such issues here in the community. Netgear reps like @RaghuHR will take care of it. Suspect this applies to all WAC5xx and WAX6xx Zero Day Web UIs.
... (otherwise I guess the bug will just keep happening until someone either pays or happens to notice it within the first 90 days):
A pure statistical problem 8-). How many WAC505 owners try to add a space char - valid as per IEEE Std. 802.11i-2004, Annex H.4.1 2. "Each character in the pass-phrase must have an encoding in the range of 32 to 126 (decimal), inclusive" - in the Day Zero UI, and then again after the 90 days of complimentary technical support. I guess very few ... and most have silently worked around as you did.
When encountering the initial "Zero Day" configuration where you enter things such as desired SSID and password, I have found that spaces typed in as part of the password are ignored. Using Chrome browser, choosing local web management, WPA2, etc.
...
The frustrating part is that there is no warning of limitation at the time you are typing spaces (or clicking to proceed) in the Zero Day. So you have to realize the problem on your own, then you learn to log in and add the spaces.
Absolutley - it's not acceptable input strings are parsed, truncated, concatenated, or changed in any other way without notifying the user.
A side problem: 1st level support must allow bug reports regardless of the support status. This might be difficult to adjust for them...
WAC505 ships with firmware 1.5.3.10 so the Zero Day was very likely with that. Immediately after the Zero Day setup, WAC505 was updated to the latest firmware which was 9.1.0.13 until 2-3 days ago when firmware 9.2.0.6 came out.
The set of prople noticing this probably reduces down to only me, because 99% of people will use Insight and the remaining 1% may not have space in their password or they won't realize it was a Zero Day setup bug like I did.
If Netgear is too lazy to try the repro themselves and there is a URL which gets me back to Zero Day with current firmware 9.2.0.6, I'm willing to try to see if it repros on 9.2.0.6. But not sure what good any of this does since it is not the firmware which ships in the box. I'd have to be in Netgear's Beta for something like that, and so far they have only involved me in Beta of consumer hardware not Business.
WAC505 ships with firmware 1.5.3.10 so the Zero Day was very likely with that. Immediately after the Zero Day setup, WAC505 was updated to the latest firmware which was 9.1.0.13 until 2-3 days ago when firmware 9.2.0.6 came out.
Sorry for my dumb question. Please understand from the original problem description the pre-Zero Day status of this WAC505 was unclear to curious reader, and the crystal ball has not told me it was sitting for hundred days or more on your storage, and it was with whatever factory firmware installed.
The set of prople noticing this probably reduces down to only me, because 99% of people will use Insight and the remaining 1% may not have space in their password or they won't realize it was a Zero Day setup bug like I did.
Well possible, yes. Sometimes we hit unique issues...
If Netgear is too lazy to try the repro themselves ...
How do you know?
For my part, I'm just yet another Netgear customer and community member.
A smarter design for the initial config in my (irrelevant) opinion? Before running the Zero Day might be to fetch the current release firmware, or it it's locally connected without Internet access challenge the admin to manually upload current firmware. This would allow to include later fixes and enhancements, like the WPA3 (personal, transition mode, enterprise, ...) support added last summer. This could limit the commodity added by the Zero Day config however.
PS. hm, used an alternate account above, so reposted.
I'd have to be in Netgear's Beta for something like that, and so far they have only involved me in Beta of consumer hardware not Business.
You can subscribe here https://smbbeta.netgear.com/ - it's mostly about new hardware only, no new firmware. For a few SMB products Beta areas pop-up in the community from time to time.
Good find - thank you for reporting! Interesting would be the firmware version which was installed when the issue happend.
Suspect this applies to all WAC5xx and WAX6xx Zero Day Web UIs.
FWIW, I installed new WAX610 today, which arrived with firmware 9.0.1.9 and did NOT have any problem with WPA2 containing spaces during Zero Day web setup. So perhaps the dropping of spaces bug was fixed somewhere between WAC505's 1.5.3.10 and that 9.0.1.9
