Migrating from one brand of APs to another

[CJRoss]

Has anyone had good luck migrating from one brand of AP to another without having to reconfigure every single device? I'm currently using Ubuiti APs but I'm trying out Engenius. I've tried matching the settings between them but even though the SSID and passphrase is the same I can't get anything to join without redoing the network setup on the device.

I'd really rather not go through and redo all of my devices, especially the IoT crap as that's always super painful.

 

[nexox]

I have used up to 3 or 4 different brands of AP with the same SSID and passphrase, the only issues I encountered were caused by incompatible default WPA configuration (which is no fun at all to troubleshoot.) The easy one was enabling WPA2 on newer APs that initially had only WPA3 allowed, more difficult was (if I recall correctly,) connecting Apple devices which won't use some of the lower security encryption modes of WPA2.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

@CJRoss

Enable WPA2/3 mixed.

If upgrading to AX, some older legacy devices will not connect to AX, even with 2.4GHz band set to non-AX mode. In that case, you may need to repurpose an older AP for those devices until you can replace them. Example, I had a 15+ year old HP printer that would not connect to my Engenius AX APs.

 

[CJRoss]

I have used up to 3 or 4 different brands of AP with the same SSID and passphrase, the only issues I encountered were caused by incompatible default WPA configuration (which is no fun at all to troubleshoot.) The easy one was enabling WPA2 on newer APs that initially had only WPA3 allowed, more difficult was (if I recall correctly,) connecting Apple devices which won't use some of the lower security encryption modes of WPA2.

I'm pretty sure I'm in the WPA config hell section of things. I had the Ubiquiti APs originally set to WPA2/WPA3 but I was able to switch them over to just WPA2. But I keep getting error code 2 prev auth not valid when I try to connect.

@CJRoss

Enable WPA2/3 mixed.

If upgrading to AX, some older legacy devices will not connect to AX, even with 2.4GHz band set to non-AX mode. In that case, you may need to repurpose an older AP for those devices until you can replace them. Example, I had a 15+ year old HP printer that would not connect to my Engenius AX APs.

I originally had WPA2/WPA3 mixed configured on both APs but it appears that Ubiquiti and Engenius handle that differently, so now I'm just trying to do WPA2 to WPA2.

My testing so far has been with my phone and laptop which are both relatively new, with the laptop being slightly older at 2019.

 

[Tech Junky]

laptop being slightly older at 2019.

Well, that's an easy fix. $20 wifi card and 5 Minutes and it will be WiFi 7. The Intel BE 200 cards on mouser.com

 

[nexox]

Oh, the next possible thing - some really awful IoT devices associate to a BSSID, not an SSID, so you just get to reconfigure those, probably check on the AP side to ensure you've got a connection to the correct AP, since the devices are awful and so of course they aren't going to tell you which BSSID they landed on.

 

[CJRoss]

Well, that's an easy fix. $20 wifi card and 5 Minutes and it will be WiFi 7. The Intel BE 200 cards on mouser.com

I don't use the laptop enough to worry about whether it's 6 or 7. I just don't want to reconfigure everything.

Oh, the next possible thing - some really awful IoT devices associate to a BSSID, not an SSID, so you just get to reconfigure those, probably check on the AP side to ensure you've got a connection to the correct AP, since the devices are awful and so of course they aren't going to tell you which BSSID they landed on.

I haven't even gotten that far. I'm literally just trying to migrate my laptop before I move to everything else.

Also, I don't have the same SSID active on both brands at once. I'm shutting it down on the Ubiquiti and bringing it up on the Engenius when I test.