Apple 6ghz limited compatibility message

[airlung]

I am planning to upgrade to wifi 6e/7 in the near future and my current setup is a main router connected to two access points (not a mesh setup), all bands with different SSID and with Iphones/Ipads/homepods and many other homekit devices connected to them. I use dfferent ssids because i wanted to know exactly what device is connected to which access point and to what band. The setup works flawnessly so far. If I were to switch to a wifi 6E router (the main router only with ipads and iphones on the 6ghz band), do i have to use the same ssid for all the 6/5/2.4 bands or I will be fine by just naming the 6ghz and 2.4ghz with the same ssid? Does all bands of the other 2 access points needed to be named the same ssid too? How does this work? Do not want that “limited compatibility“ message to appear.. Thx

 

[sfx2000]

If you are tri-band with Apple gear - common SSID/auth should be fine...

6GHz requires WPA3 - 2.4/5GHz can do WPA2 and WPA2/3...

It's when the 2.4/5GHz radios use WPA2 is when you get this alert/scare page when also having 6GHz present.

 

[L&LD]

If the 'near future' to you is less than when WiFi 7 Gen 2 routers get released, tested, and recommended (widely), my recommendation is don't.

Don't take down a working setup. Don't jump on WiFi 7 Gen 1 hardware. Don't expect things to work flawlessly with Apple (at least, not initially and for a long time afterward).

Use what you have working and keep saving your money right now. If things are working flawlessly so far, what is your rush to spend money needlessly 'soon'?

 

[airlung]

Ture! That why I am planing to upgrade to 6E and that’s is it. Do not need the speed of WiFi 7 anyways

 

[L&LD]

And what benefits are the overpriced WiFi 6E routers offering you today then?

 

[airlung]

Well sometime I just wanted to try out some new tech. And the price of the Asus AXE 16000 is not that bad in Amazon

 

[L&LD]

They only look 'not bad' vs. WiFi 7 offerings to me.

 

[tgl]

And what benefits are the overpriced WiFi 6E routers offering you today then?

I'll agree with @L&LD here to the extent of saying that you need to be clear on what benefit you're after (though not on the pejorative "overpriced", because right now 7-capable gear is that and then some). If your answer is "I live in a dense neighborhood where the 2.4 and 5 bands are already overcrowded", then buying some 6GHz-capable gear today makes sense. Otherwise, maybe waiting a year or two for WiFi 7 gear to become affordable is your better move.

In any case, I think a big part of the reason that Apple is sticky about this is that they want to be sure there's a decent fallback path if you move too far from the router for 6GHz to work well. So you really need to let go of the idea that you're going to force every device to run on a preassigned band or not at all. It's not a productive approach, if it ever was.

 

[airlung]

Thx all, so back to original question, by assigning “only” the 6Ghz and 2.4Ghz with the same SSID and password of the main router and different ssid for the 5Ghz and different ssid for all other bands for the other 2 access points, will I still get the limited compatibility message? Thx

 

[tgl]

Apple's official support page for 6e says you should be running the same SSID on all three bands. I've not particularly bothered to poke at the margins of that. Maybe you can avoid the warning with only two bands, or maybe not; it wasn't an interesting question for me. There's also some text there discussing what happens if the 6GHz router is broadcasting on 5GHz but with a different SSID --- but if you're trying to avoid getting any client-side warnings, you won't like either of the choices.

 

[sfx2000]

Apple's official support page for 6e says you should be running the same SSID on all three bands. I've not particularly bothered to poke at the margins of that. Maybe you can avoid the warning with only two bands, or maybe not; it wasn't an interesting question for me. There's also some text there discussing what happens if the 6GHz router is broadcasting on 5GHz but with a different SSID --- but if you're trying to avoid getting any client-side warnings, you won't like either of the choices.

The only concern I would have is that when running a triple band router with 6e on common SSID's is....

6e requires WPA3 only (or open, even there, it requires SAE) - 2.4 and 5 GHz WPA3 is still optional - there's nothing wrong with going WPA3 except that...

There's a lot of legacy equipment that will never get updates to WPA3, and a lot of IoT devices fall into this category...

 

[sfx2000]

Don't take down a working setup. Don't jump on WiFi 7 Gen 1 hardware. Don't expect things to work flawlessly with Apple (at least, not initially and for a long time afterward).

Strongly aligned here - while there are AP's out there that support WiFi7 (not just for 6Ghz BTW, but all bands) - it's really early in the product cycle, and most offerings are going to be premium priced...

2025 is a better time frame, IMHO, for WiFi7 - prices will come down, but also the firmware and drivers will be more mature and less buggy...

 

[tgl]

6e requires WPA3 only (or open, even there, it requires SAE) - 2.4 and 5 GHz WPA3 is still optional - there's nothing wrong with going WPA3 except that...
There's a lot of legacy equipment that will never get updates to WPA3, and a lot of IoT devices fall into this category...

Agreed, no matter how many bands are involved you'll need to run a second SSID with lower security for your legacy devices. AFAIK, WiFi 7 won't change that at all.

From this perspective it'd be nice if the SSID's lower bands could be run with a different WPA level from the 6GHz band, but it seems the standard doesn't allow that (or at least my Ubiquiti APs don't). So you have to create an additional SSID. This is a good thing really from a security perspective, but it's annoying to have it crammed down your throat.

 

[sfx2000]

Agreed, no matter how many bands are involved you'll need to run a second SSID with lower security for your legacy devices. AFAIK, WiFi 7 won't change that at all.

It's not really a WiFi7 issue - it's more the restrictions around 6GHz in general, even with 6e...

Having that second SSID for legacy is a decent idea, and one that should be considered for the Vendors to be something that is NOT GuestNetwork with all the mess that entails...

Perhaps some day we'll see a 4-radio device;

1) 2.4GHz for IoT devices (n150 perhaps - could even be one of the combo BT/BLE/WiFi chips over SDIO)
2) 2.4GHz for WiFi7 with support for 11g/n/ax/be
3) 5.0GHz for newer devices that support 11a/n/ac/ax/be
4) 6 GHz for 11ax/be

I've done some checking on the item (1) above - the WiFi/BT/BLE chip, and it's not a huge addition to the bill of material, and for most of the modern WiFi Router/AP SoC's, the interfaces are there to support it at the HW/SW driver level...

The biggest problem with 2.4 is legacy 11b support - turn that off at the driver level, and it's actually not that bad - even in a 20MHz channel, an 11ax radio can support OFDM and rates up to MCS7...

 

[airlung]

Thx all for the input, so if I were to go 6 ghz, I need to have a different access point for the older homekit smart home devices that do not support wpa 3? Are they going to still work together in an apple HomeKit setup with different wpa levels? Thx

 

[tgl]

No, you shouldn't need extra access points, assuming that you buy a 6e router that can support multiple SSIDs --- which most do, I believe.

What you'd do is to configure the 6e router with a "new" SSID using WPA3 and broadcasting that on all bands, plus an "old" SSID using WPA2 and broadcasting that on only 2.4 and/or 5GHz. For ease of roaming you'd probably replicate that configuration on your other APs, although obviously without the 6GHz band.

If you want to access HomeKit across all your devices, then you need to make sure that both SSIDs access your regular house network; you don't want "guest net" isolation. (If you've got actual guests to worry about, you might want a third SSID that is isolated from your house net.) If memory serves, with AIMesh the first "guest" net is isolated but the second and third aren't. On other gear there's usually a more direct way to say what you want for that. On the whole though, I wouldn't recommend using AIMesh for this, because it has a reputation for not behaving very well if the nodes don't all have the same set of radios. If you use ASUS gear, ignore AIMesh and set up the additional APs as independently-configured APs.