hAP ax2, station mode: Unable to connect to ancient wifi using WPA-PSK w/ TKIP

A few weeks ago, we spent lovely holidays in France. My strategy to provide internet connectivity to the family as quick as possible is a typical “travel router” approach:

  • connect a MikroTik wlan router to the wifi of the vacation home [2.4 GHz Band, MikroTik in station mode]
  • Let the MikroTik router provide an AP on the 5 GHz Band for the devices of the family

This time, I had a brand new hAP ax2 with me, but was unable to connect to the wifi of the vacation home.
A little bit of investigation revealed the “special thing” about the wifi there: it used the already longtime deprecated WPA-PSK w/ TKIP for encryption.

Sidenote: Holidays were saved by using a hAP ac2, which had no problems connecting to the ancient wifi.

This weekend I had a some time to do the following experiment:

  • Linksys WRT54GL w/ OpenWRT 10.03.1 acting as “The vacation home in France”: AP 802.11b+g, wireless security WPA-PSK, cipher: TKIP

Observations:

  • hAP ax2, RouterOS 7.12: unable to properly connect: DHCP client stuck at “searching”, even after setting address and gateway/routes by hand: no connection (e.g. no ping possible)
  • hAP ac2, RouterOS 7.12: able to connect without problems.
  • After just changing OpenWRT to use WPA2-PSK, hAP ax2 connects without problems: DHCP client working, pings working.

Is there a way to make hAP ax2 connect to those old wifis? Thx in advance for any advice.

This seems to be ax-related bug. So I suggest you to create supout file at the time when ax2 is unable to communicate with OpenWRT (WPA-TKIP only) … and open trouble ticket with support@mikrotik.com.

I also use an AX2 as a “travel router” and have successfully used the notes here:

https://nixfaq.org/2020/06/using-a-mikrotik-router-as-a-wireless-client-station-to-a-802-1x-eap-secured-wifi-network.html

to connect to ‘older’ wifi equipment as you have described. (adjust according to your needs)

Thank you for your replies!

Trouble ticket is in preparation.