Smart Devices Won't Stay on Wifi Connection

[c0ntax]

I have noticed, over the last few days, that a number of my smart devices have dropped their WiFi connection. On re-connecting them they stay connected to WiFi for a few minutes but drop off again.

I have EE Smart Hub on f/w version r2.68.18-R-1303195-PROD-83002 and I thought maybe it was a recent update that had caused it but looking on this forum I see that f/w was released back in January.

I did spot in my settings that security was set to WPA3-Personal Transition so I changed it to WPA3-Personal to see if that resolved the issues but it hasn't. WPA2/WPA2 (AES) appears to have been removed as an option and I'm wondering if the devices I'm having an issue with don't like WPA3. Two devices manufactured by LG won't stay on WiFi and on their support page it says to use WPA2 so I'm wondering if that is the actual issue, but I don't know how to resolve it if WPA2 is no longer an option on the router.

I may be way off, and it's something else causing the problem. If it was just one device I could understand but it is affecting around 10 devices in the last week.

I factory reset the router but this had no effect.

Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone know how to resolve it?

[JimM11 · Accepted solution]

@c0ntax The FW upgrade is to match similarity with the Pro router version, you may have to now setup the compatible feature mode of the router to get the settings that you need.

[c0ntax]

Looks like that was the issue. I created the compatible WiFi and renamed it to my original WiFi SSID (to save having to reconnect every device) and every device that had an issue has now connected and stayed connected, so it appears my theory of the cause being the change of security protocol was correct. It's annoying because the devices that had an issue are all only less than 2 years old so they're not ancient. Maybe because they connect on 2.4GHz is also not helpful.

I wouldn't have known about the compatible WiFi though, so thanks for the heads up @JimM11  I was ready to get my ASUS ZenWifi Mesh system set back up until I tried your suggestion instead. The ZenWifi is better but that presented its own problems previously as I also have EE TV and EE TV and EE Broadband doesn't like 3rd party routers as it stops FW updates I found.

With WPA 3 being an updated security protocol, I'll probably contact each manufacturer and suggest FW updates to enable connection via that protocol.

[JimM11]

@c0ntax To save you time, getting any older device to get to WPA 3 operation is not going to happen as it is also a hardware chip that requires replacement. As an Asus XT8 user myself, have not found anything that stopped the asus from doing it's FW auto update on it or the asus RP-AX58 also, but you could turn the feature off, and just get by checking every so often.

FW updates can sometimes cause more bother than what they are trying to fix. Hope that your system keeps stable now!