Netgear R6250 Wireless Passwords, Characters Not Allowed

[GSet]

I was attempting to upgrade the security of my new R6250 Smart WiFi Router, by changing the wifi network access passwords.

When I pressed the 'Apply' button I recieved an alert:

routerlogin.net says

"Character is not allowed in password."

My first question would be why? To make truly effective passwords, there should not be a liimt on types of characters.

Moving past that issue, the admin tool did not inform me which of the characters in my passwords were the offending character or characters. I looked in my manual and on the web but I cannot find a list of what characters are allowed and are not allowed.

Does anyone know where there is a list for allowed or not allowed charceters?

Thank you

Firmware Version: V1.0.4.38_10.1.30

Macbook Pro 16"

Mac OS 10.15.7 Catalina

[schumaku · Accepted solution]

This key or passphrase consists of 8 to 63 printable ASCII characters only. This means, each character in the passphrase must have an encoding in the range of 32 to 126 (decimal), inclusive. The space character is included in this range. (IEEE Std. 802.11i-2004, Annex H.4.1). So different from the SSID there are no fancy UTF8 or the like encoded characters allowed.*

Needless to say: The so called "user interface" and it's error handling on Netgear routers is a relict from the late 1990ties.  

* as @plemans already mentioned - for the SSID, even if a string of all nulls would be allowed for example, tools, apps, user interfaces of other OS  might show things different - because the SSID allows -any- encoding. So here again it's suggested to stick with the same printable ASCII restrictions for optimal interoperability. I would even suggest to avoid the space character. depending on the browser or App what appears to be the "same" character on the display can be encoded differently - so be warned. Many vendors are very lazy in this area... 

[plemans]

I've found its more an issue of other devices supporting special characters. Devices connect to the router not the other way around. So if the IoT/cheap wireless device doesn't support special characters, they won't connect. And then people complain about the router being the issue. 

So its easier to just make the router not able to use them. (easier isn't always better)

I usually stick to letters/number. 

If someone is that determined to get my info, they're going to get it. I'm just not making it easy for them.

[schumaku · Accepted solution]

This key or passphrase consists of 8 to 63 printable ASCII characters only. This means, each character in the passphrase must have an encoding in the range of 32 to 126 (decimal), inclusive. The space character is included in this range. (IEEE Std. 802.11i-2004, Annex H.4.1). So different from the SSID there are no fancy UTF8 or the like encoded characters allowed.*

Needless to say: The so called "user interface" and it's error handling on Netgear routers is a relict from the late 1990ties.  

* as @plemans already mentioned - for the SSID, even if a string of all nulls would be allowed for example, tools, apps, user interfaces of other OS  might show things different - because the SSID allows -any- encoding. So here again it's suggested to stick with the same printable ASCII restrictions for optimal interoperability. I would even suggest to avoid the space character. depending on the browser or App what appears to be the "same" character on the display can be encoded differently - so be warned. Many vendors are very lazy in this area... 

[GSet]

Thanks schumaku:

Turns out I only had one offending character, €

I bookmarked the list for future reference.

Thanks again