My smart devices won't connect to helix wifi

Hi, I might have a theory on why your devices don't want to connect to Helix 2.4Ghz, I worked many years 10+ on wifi at HP/Aruba network in the firmware, my theory is the Helix 2.4Ghz only support WPA2-AES only (both unicast and multicast traffic require AES encryption), there was an old mode that we call WPA mixed mode, with TKIP (old **blip**py WPA1) and AES (WPA2 new good), the reason that "**blip**py" mixed mode exist is to support old devices that can only either do TKIP or AES for unicast and TKIP for multicast.

I might confuse you here but on the Helix router, you do not have the Mixed mode, it is not configurable.

I have a wifi sniffer and I can confirm that the Helix only supports pure WPA2-AES.

Tag: RSN Information
Tag Number: RSN Information (48)
Tag length: 20
RSN Version: 1
Group Cipher Suite: 00-0f-ac (Ieee8021) AES (CCM)
Pairwise Cipher Suite Count: 1
Pairwise Cipher Suite List 00-0f-ac (Ieee8021) AES (CCM)
Auth Key Management (AKM) Suite Count: 1
Auth Key Management (AKM) List 00-0f-ac (Ieee8021) PSK
RSN Capabilities: 0x0000

I know this sound very technical if you don`t work in the field, so my suggestion for you is to get an old router that still support Mixed-mode in the configuration of wifi security to have the old device work.

I spent years troubleshooting wifi and sometime you need to dig down to the wifi trace capture to see why the devices cannot connect.

But I can understand why Helix does not support the old Mix Mode, because of newer security concern TKIP is less secure than AES and some certification like Wifi-Alliance kind of make mandatory AES.

I totally understand your frustration, if you need more help just ping me on the forum.