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[sschnath]

I bought the DAP-1860 with the intention of extending my DIR-890L/R.   I was under the impression that the 1860 would allow me to use the same SSID as the 890 but I have not been able to do that. I've been forced make the 1860 its own network which is exactly what I didn't want to do.

After some troubleshooting it appears that having a semicolon as the 23rd character in the password appears to be the problem. I replaced that semicolon with both a colon and a numeric character (1) and I was then able to connect. I use the same password in the 890 and it works fine but it will not work in the 1860.  That seems to be such an unlikely root cause but the behavior is consistent.

The simple fix appears to be change the password but I use a 63-character password and I have many older devices that require manual entry of the entire password so I'm not really interested in changing it.

Another option is to change out the entire setup and find another access point or invest in a mesh solution. But I hate to do that because the DAP-1860 should be all I need and I thought that using a D-link extender with a D-link router would minimize my setup issues although it hasn't worked out that way.

Before I make the time investment a password change requires, I'd like to know whether anyone is using the 1860 to successfully extend their 890 configuration exactly including the use of Smart Connect on both devices?

[FurryNutz]

Link>Welcome!

• What Hardware version is your DAP? Look at the sticker under the DAP.
• Link>What Firmware version is currently loaded? Found on the DAPs web page under status.
• What region are you located?
• Link>What Firmware version is currently loaded? Found on the routers web page under status.

Is Smart Connect enabled on the 890L?

As a test can you using a 8 character PW on the 890L and see if the 1860 will connect up in extender mode using the 8 character PW? Use only alpha characters or a mix of alpha and numeric only. No special characters for this test.

[sschnath]

What Hardware version is your DAP?
HW: A1

What Firmware version is currently loaded? Found on the DAPs web page under status.
FW: 1.01

What region are you located?
North America

What Firmware version is currently loaded?
DIR-890L   HW:A1   FW:1.11

Smart Connect is enabled on both devices and I have a guest network enabled on  the 890L. Just to be clear, I'm using the 1860 as an access point. I have Existing Network set to Ethernet.

I will try the suggested password test tomorrow.

[sschnath]

Results of the password test:

With the test password I'm able to successfully use the 1860 as a WAP. Same SSID, same password. No issues connecting to the 1860 and when I move closer to the 890 both test devices (one phone and one tablet) eventually switch over to the router. Exactly what I want.

The one thing I noticed during the switch over is that the tablet, when switching to the new network, took a little time authenticating (I was watching it with Wifi Analyzer). I don't know if that would have any impact on streaming media performance but I don't know that we'll have devices moving back and forth like that very often anyway. The tablet is not exactly a speed demon so it could be normal for it. If the switch over time does become an issue then I may need to move to a complete WAP solution -- I have Ethernet ports in the places I would place them but I'll wait until the family complains first!

The specific failure mode I'm having with my regular password is that devices just refused to authenticate when connecting to the 1860. And I was copying and pasting the password so I know what I was being entered was correct. No issues when using the same password in the 890.

The good news is the system can behave as expected. The bad news is it's going to require a password change to get it there and I'm not sure I want to make that time investment. Before I go down that path can anyone at D-link confirm if there are certain characters to stay away from on the 1860?

[FurryNutz]

What characters are you using? Can you PM me the sample PW that your using on the 890L that your wanting to use?

[FurryNutz]

Wow, with a PW like that, I presume there is some unsupported characters in that PW. 
For now, remove all special characters and use only letters and numbers. I'll ask D-Link what is supported on the DAP.

[sschnath]

Was just randomly generated by Roboform. If the 890L had MAC filtering I'd be a little less concerned about the password strength. I'll be curious to hear what you're able to find out. Thanks!

[FurryNutz]

all the years Ive been using letters and numbers only. Been safe and secure here. 13 characters is max on some devices and such. I still only use 8. 

[FurryNutz]

Ok, here what I got from D-Link:
WPA supports 8 to 63 ASCII characters.
Supported characters: 0-9,a-z,A-Z,~!@$%^&*()_+-={}[];:|,./<>?

They said that maybe how clients are parsing these characters maybe the issue. So your combination your using on the 890L maybe the DAP is handling or not handling your combination in your PW you set up. So try something less complex or different on the 890L so the DAP and other clients can handle the PW better. Instead of using your PW, try making something up and replace normal letters with special characters like for example:
TheQu!ckBr0wnF0xJump$OverTheL@zyD0gsB@ck

The PW doesn't have to be too complex to be secure and keep things safe.

[sschnath]

Ok, I will figure something out. That will certainly be better than buying new hardware I don't need. Thanks for looking into this for me.

[FurryNutz]

You'll be fine with using a less complex PW.  At least you know it does work.

Enjoy.