Incompatibility with older devices (TV's) and inability to configure EE router

[matthewmcneilly]

I am trying to help a friend who has recently switched to EE since December 2025. Initially all worked well but suddenly some of her tv's (x3) lost internet connection (they are old but not ancient, still have smart capability). And also her sons VR Headset requires reconnecting to the wifi and entering the wifi password each time after powering down the device. Upon inspection the WiFi is working fine on all other devices (laptops, mobiles, ps4, firesticks, nintendo switch) and seems stable. However on the tv's they refuse to detect the network even after resetting them. The network is using WPA3-Personal-Transition security type so should be backward compatible out of the box. What I have tried;

• Resetting hub to factory settings
• Setting up compatibility wifi network using WPA2. Doesnt find this network.
• Setting up guest mode using WPA2 protocol. Doesnt find this network.
• Disabling 5GHz band 
• Moving TV's closer to the router 
• Manually entering the ssid and password on the tv's. Connects to the network but has no internet connection.

When using a mobile hotspot the tv's are able to connect fine. And neighboring wifi networks are also viewable. 

Leaving me to suspect the wifi channel. From what I have read the compatibility and guest network use the same channel as the main network. The router is setup to automatically select a channel and will not allow me to manually configure either 2.4GHz or 5GHz. By default it is choosing channels such as channel 100 (DFS) which could cause problems with older devices. Is there any plan from EE to remedy this and allow more configuration to protect against issues with older devices. 

[daveb10780]

Thanks for the reply and I only wish we could, the only setting I have is for for security type and not Wireless Mode.My old laptop device is seeing no SSIDs Also when I try and connect to the compatible network from my phone it has the little 6 icon which I suspect it should have 5 or blank (see top connection on phone screen), same with the EE Wifi SSID. I think EE have really not got compatible type configured correctly which would be a major flaw and worth a speedy resolution.

[JimM11]

@daveb10780 Lot going on under the hood for transmissions hub wise, main, compat, guest if enabled, and all the hidden backhaul's, EE WiFi may also be up and out depending on what the hub does. You may just have to Ethernet web the hub, start turning off what you can and see if the laptop finds, if not then time to get an old RE connect that up and get the laptop connected to it!

[daveb10780]

There are indeed a lot of possibilities but if EE hadn't hidden most of the options I bet I could get it working fine. They are clearly not setting up a compatible network, what devices was that tested with I wonder.?A room full of old hardware would be a good idea. My current solution is a WiFi dongle for the laptop but it really should not be necessary.

[JimM11]

@daveb10780 Correct, had the son's ring doorbell, just would not connect to the VM hub 5x no matter what, just had to stick a Tp RE in and get that connected, doorbell had no issues connecting to that whatsoever!

The mid Feb 2025 intro of compat to the Hub Plus did more harm than good, 1st week of march hung up the spur's and departed!

[bobpullen]

@daveb10780 - Compatible WiFi uses WiFi 6 and that's intentional from what I can gather. DFS channels are irrelevant if you can't connect to the 2.4GHz Compatible WiFi network either.

Given the laptop cannot 'see' the SSID at all then I strongly suspect it's a WiFi 6 thing. I have encountered old Realtek network cards before that have exactly this problem. See here for something that sounds similar.

You may have some success trying to reinstall a different driver package for the network card. A less fuss option (but carries some expense) might be to invest in a cheap USB WiFi adapter.

[daveb10780]

I have indeed gone for the simple approach of a cheap USB dongle which is certainly the simplest and most reliable solution. It is a little disengenous to market a Compatible Network that is not really. All it does in practice is let you have an old and new SSID since WPA3-Personal-Transition supports most WPA2 devices. 

As an aside I did shoot myself in the foot in that there is a later driver available which may or not work but only for Windows 10. I have done an unsupported, albeit successful, upgrade to Windows 11 on the laptop so the driver will not install but would undoubtedly work.