WPA/WPA2 Deprecation

[PaulB]

My wife and I have iPad Pros of various vintages running iPadOS 14.3 (up-to-date version), an iPad Air (terminal at iOS 12.x; cannot run iPadOS) and iPhones running iOS 14.3.

The devices running the 14.3 version of the OS show that the WiFi connection to my network has "Weak Security". The explanation given is that "WPA/WPA2 (TKIP) is not considered secure." The iPad Air (and our Win 10 computers) are silent on this issue.

The suggested remedy is to configure the router to use WPA2 (AES) or WPA3 security type. The best I can do is use WPA2 Personal or WPA2/WPA Mixed Personal. I have been using the latter for a number of years but do not remember why that was chosen. I am also offered the Enterprise versions of these but I do not have a RADIUS server. My router vendor (Linksys) does not have any firmware updates available for my device.

While I am resigned (looking forward ) to replacing my router, my question is this: Are the various variants of WPA, WPA2 and WPA3 hardware features or software features of a router?

[StuartR]

This is very likely to be implemented in software in the router, but it may not be software that can be changed.

[PaulB]

Thanks, Stuart.

[JoeP]

You are probably using fixed because you had some devices which did not support wpa2 when you installed the router. Try changing it to wpa2 personal. See if all your devices still work.

[PaulB]

I think you're right, Joe. I will change to WPA2 Personal to see what happens. A search of the Internet leads me to believe Personal supports both TKIP and AES encryption protocols. I will report back.

[StuartR]

I have turned off the WiFi on my router and use a much more functional WiFi mesh network.

You can buy a Wireless Access Point quite cheaply nowadays, so this might be a reasonable solution for you.