What the heck is Auto WPA Shared key?

Product Discussion Peplink Balance
1

I stumbled across this feature by accident. What does it do?

It is not mentioned in the Balance 8.2 manual

It was mentioned in this Forum back in 2015 with a screen shot but there was no response

Got mentioned again in 2019 and again, no explanation

Both Forum postings asked the same question as me - what is this feature?

As a former programmer this is baffling. Someone went to the trouble to program this feature but no one can be bothered explaining why it exists, let alone what it does. If I had programmed it, I would be annoyed.

My guess is that it changes the WiFi password periodically and is meant for public WiFi networks where it saves a business owner the trouble of rotating the WiFi password manually. I have seen this feature in a Synology router.

2

@Michael234, assuming if you want to have the WPA key automatically change (by the interval, eg. Day, Week, or Month), then you can utilize this feature.

Here is an example of the configuration:

  1. Create an SSID with auto WPA Shared key

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  2. Once you have saved the setting, you will see a button for you to download the CSV file, which is a list of WPA key generated by the system.

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  3. You can view the CSV file - WPA key list, which that particular SSID will be authenticated based this WPA key list, per the date. Sample below.
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Hope this helps, and of course, we will update this into the upcoming firmware user manual.

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