Sunday, September 15, 2019

Have a device (Roku or other) that won't connect to wifi?

I have a sister-in-law that bought a new Roku express this weekend.  She spent 4 hours fighting an issue where it wouldn't connect to her wifi claiming that the passcode is incorrect.  She searched forums, called xfinity support, and Roku support all to no solution.  She found that she should enter the MAC address in the router which didn't help.  Reset her router passcode, but why when every other device is working on the wifi just fine with that passcode. Change the WPA2 AES settings to something else.  Again why, the other devices are working fine.

Finally she decides to call me.  After about 20 seconds looking at her router settings I advise making the 2.4GHz and 5GHz wifi networks the same password.  Since the Roku Express only supports 2.4GHz it's trying to connect to 2.4, but since they are different passcodes and the same SSID there is nothing indicating to her that she needs to enter the 2.4GHz passcode.  In fact she didn't even know it or that there was ANY difference as Xfinity staff set it up.

Immediately this resolved the issue

Make them the same SSID and Passcode and let it just work.  The device will connect to the frequency it wants / supports and the end user doesn't need to care.  Or if you insist on different passcodes for some reason, make the SSID different as well as a visual indicator.