Do I need to add special characters to the router WiFi password? The TV camera couldn't lose, so I changed it back to 12 alphanumeric characters to stop it.

Last month I replaced the router at my parents' house, and I changed the birthday password I had used for five years to one I thought was very safe. A1b@2026# . The night after the change, my mother said that the TV was not connected to the Internet, so I took a look remotely.: There is nothing in the remote control soft keyboard of Hisense’s old TV. @ this key. My dad called again the next day and said that the Xiaodu camera network kept spinning. On the third day of struggling, I changed my password back Qian2026wifi12 , the TV, camera, and sweeper are all ready at once. This article will record this detour.: Should I add special characters to my home WiFi password, and how can I set it up safely without causing any trouble for myself?

Let’s talk about the conclusion first: Home passwords, length is more valuable than special characters

Many people think that adding a ! , @ , # It is equivalent to being insured, but this is not the case for home WiFi. Password strength depends on length first, and then on character type. an 8-bit A1b@2026# , and a 12-bit Qian2026wifi12 , the search space of the latter is larger, and the latter is easy to lose on TV and easy to remember for the elderly.

When using online tools to run a dictionary, the first thing to try is short passwords such as pure numbers, birthday, mobile phone number, pinyin plus year. As long as your password exceeds 12 digits and does not include your birthday or house number, pure letters and numbers are enough to decommission the router for ordinary households. Special characters are only icing on the cake after you have met the length. It's not worth it to make it impossible to connect to all the smart devices in the house just because of those few symbols.

I only have one caliber now: More than 12 digits, mixed with uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers, do not include birthday, mobile phone number, house number and name pinyin . Qian2026wifi12 This is just an example I gave. You can replace it with an easy-to-remember spoken pinyin and add the year and fixed letters. If you can’t remember it, just write it into a memo on your phone and add a lock. It’s better than memorizing it by heart.

Why do special characters jam TVs and cameras?

The router itself accepts almost all characters. The problem lies with the devices connected to it. The remote control soft keyboard of old TVs only has a few keys, which are common in input methods. @ , # , ! I often can't find it, and some require me to switch to the symbol page. Even if the old man held the remote control and pressed it for ten minutes, he couldn't press it correctly.

Smart devices such as cameras, doorbells, and sweepers are even more troublesome. When distributing the network, the mobile phone transmits the password to it. Some firmwares do not uniformly encode special characters, especially # , & , spaces, are easily truncated or escaped during the transmission process. What the device receives will not be the string you entered. Xiaodu’s camera is stuck here: I entered the correct password on my phone, but it kept saying the password was wrong.

There is also a hidden pit that is full-width and half-width. The default Chinese punctuation provided by the mobile phone input method is full-width, for example ＠ and @ Look alike, but appear to be two characters to the device. You filled in half-width in the background of the router, but when configuring the network, the phone sent a full-width. If both sides were wrong, the password would not be correct and the connection could not be made. So now I simply don’t let the symbols that require cutting the keyboard appear in the password, so as not to have to explain every time.

I tried it on three devices, and the support levels were quite different.

In order not to rely on my feelings anymore, I tried two passwords on several devices at home, and the results were quite intuitive.:

Not all old devices are like this, but the probability that two of the three smart devices in my home are stuck is enough to illustrate the problem. If you only have a mobile phone and a computer at home, feel free to use special characters ； As long as you have a TV box, camera, doorbell or an old-style sweeper, don't gamble on its compatibility with Internet access throughout the house.

Don’t choose the wrong encryption method: WPA2-PSK/AES is the default answer

It’s not enough to just set the password correctly, you also need to look at the encryption method. If you still have WEP or WPA-TKIP in the background wireless settings, no matter how long the password is, it will be useless. WEP can be broken in minutes with off-the-shelf tools, but TKIP is old and slow. Direct selection of home routers WPA2-PSK/AES , which is currently the most balanced set of compatibility and security.

New routers in the past two or three years can also choose WPA2/WPA3 mixed mode, allowing new mobile phones to use WPA3 and old TVs to fall back to WPA2. But when you have that kind of particularly old equipment at home, you may encounter a situation of "cannot be found but cannot connect" when turning on WPA3. I will write down the solutions and trade-offs in detail. How to choose between WPA2 and WPA3 , I won’t repeat it here. Simply put: Being able to stably connect the whole house is more important than chasing a new agreement.

I didn't look at this column when I helped my neighbor set it up for the first time. His Mercury D191G was still stuck at "WPA-PSK/TKIP". After the mobile phone was connected, the negotiated speed dropped to 54Mbps. The 300M broadband at home was only in the low 20s. After changing to WPA2-PSK/AES and restarting, the speed returned to normal. This kind of old option is usually not hidden deeply, but its impact is on the whole house. When changing the password, just swipe it and it only takes a minute.

Also turn off WPS. WPS's PIN code has a long-standing problem of being leaked out, which is equivalent to leaving an unlocked side door next to your carefully set password. I wrote the complete investigation of this matter in How to check the article about WiFi being exploited? Here, handle it together when setting the password to avoid overturning it later.

2.4G and 5G need to be modified separately, and the whole house must be reconnected after modification.

When a dual-band router has two WiFi names, the passwords for 2.4G and 5G can usually be set separately. Many people only changed 5G, but 2.4G is still the old password. If the phone is switched back to 2.4G, it can still be connected. It feels like "it is useless to change it." I wrote an article about this. Router settings changed but not effective . So when you enter the background, first change the passwords of both frequency bands to the same string, don’t just change one.

Take a photo of the old password or write it down on a note before changing it. If you enter the new password incorrectly, the old device can be retrieved using the old password. It’s really to the point where I can’t even enter the backstage, just read what I wrote before How to retrieve WiFi password if you forget it , no need to press the reset button as soon as it comes up.

After saving and restarting, the sequence is: First, let your mobile phone and computer re-enter the new password to confirm that you can access the Internet. ； If you want to reconnect "dumb devices" such as cameras, sweepers, and TVs, they won't pop up on their own. You have to go into their respective apps to re-configure the network. If your computer is stuck, you may immediately suspect the symbols in the password. Change the password to 12 digits of pure alphanumeric characters and try again. It usually only takes one time.

A quick check of each backend entrance, ending in this order

The entrance to wireless passwords and encryption methods. The names of each brand differ by one or two characters. Check with the commonly used ones.:

If you can't find it, just type "Wireless Security" or "Encryption" in the search box at the top of the background, which is faster than scrolling through menus. Finally, the order was condensed into three sentences: Remember the old password first, then change it to 12 alphanumeric characters for 2.4G and 5G respectively. After saving, reconnect the smart device first. . If you can't connect, just delete the special characters. Don't compete with an old TV.

This time I went around for three days and finally just put @ and # Remove it and lengthen the password to 12 characters, and the problem will disappear. In the final analysis, the home WiFi password is not a place to show complexity, but a place to make every device in the home usable and outsiders unable to get in. Suppose you first count how many cameras, TVs and sweepers you have at home, and then decide whether to compete with those symbols. Usually the answer is self-explanatory.