Does the Redmi AX6 still support WEP encryption in OpenWrt?

For Developers
1

Hardware Redmi AX6
Firmware version OpenWrt 24.10
Purpose: I'm trying to enable WEP encryption because I have an old game console at home that only supports WEP Wi-Fi networks.

I selected the following two options in the build configuration:

  • wpad-openssl
  • Enable support for unsecure and obsolete WEP

After a successful build, the LuCI interface showed the WEP encryption option. However, after configuring the wireless settings, I saw the following messages in the system log:

daemon.err hostapd: nl80211: kernel reports: key setting validation failed  
daemon.warn hostapd: Could not set WEP encryption.

Is WEP encryption simply no longer supported on this hardware/driver? Or is there a way to get it working?

2

WEP was disabled from hostapd in 2020.

Be aware that at least some drivers (mt76 based on the commit messages without looking deeper) may be in the process of removing support at the driver level.

As your device uses ath11k, I would guess that you can still compile your own version of OpenWrt and turn on WPA_ENABLE_WEP.
How long this will continue to work for is not clear and it could be removed at any time.

1 Like
3

I checked the build logs and confirmed that WPA_ENABLE_WEP is already enabled. So I suspect that the ath11k driver has completely dropped support for WEP encryption.