Does surf soho handle wifi differently then other wifi routers?

My isp, with my permission, installed a wifi router in my basement to do an FCC study. It has no connection to my home network. It is on it’s own separate network with it’s own outside public IP. I can use it if I want to but I don’t as I have cat 6 going to all my computers. The only devices that currently use my wifi are my cell phones when they are inside the house. My surf soho firewall has a nice set of rules. I have no idea what the ISP’s router has and I have no control over it. I have tested the surf soho wifi with all my computers (OS-X and LInux) and they can all use it if I let them.

I want my raspberry pi 3 B 1.2 to use my wifi because of where it will be located. My raspberry pi can see both the ISP’s wireless router and the surf soho. But surf soho is grayed out and cannot even be selected. Does the Surf Soho’s wifi somehow look differently that anyone can think of?

how about some screenshots?

out of curiosity, what is the FCC studying??

My ISP got a grant to spread high speed internet into rural areas. I live out in the boondocks and have fiber to my house. Too keep the money they have to show that they are providing the service that they say they are are. For the next year or so they can do, what me as an old timer would call a “loop back” from their CO and record the up and down over their network.

As you can see from below the Raspberry PI can see both routers. I was able to tell the ISP what I wanted the SSID and password to be for their router. I told the Raspberry PI today to use their router and it was able to do so successfully. Even though the “sudo iwlist wlan0 scan | more” run from the Raspberry PI shows that it can see both routers. When I try to tell it to use “JohnGalt” (my router) it is grayed out. “Helioseismology” is not grayed out and my Raspberry PI can use it. Arrrgh!

----------------From the Raspberry PI---------------
cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME=“Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)”
NAME=“Debian GNU/Linux”
VERSION_ID=“11”
VERSION=“11 (bullseye)”
VERSION_CODENAME=bullseye
ID=debian
-----------------------------the ISP’s wireless router------GigaSpire Blast
sudo iwlist wlan0 scan | more
wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 84:D3:43:20:2B:25
Channel:1
Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
Quality=52/70 Signal level=-58 dBm
Encryption key:on
ESSID:“Helioseismology”
------------------------------My wireless router---------a Peplink surf soho–
Cell 02 - Address: A8:C0:EA:42:27:84
Channel:11
Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
Quality=67/70 Signal level=-43 dBm
Encryption key:on
ESSID:“JohnGalt”

cat wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=US

ScreenShot of grayed out

I have edited /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplican.conf so that it has the correct information to talk to JohnGalt wifi. It is still grayed out.

I’m not a network expert, but my next step would be to install a wifi analyzer on my phone and check the wifi characteristics of the pi for compatibility with the router.

Bob R.

So does it work on other devices? Such as cell phone?

I am sure this is not a peplink issue. I can connect via the Peplink wifi from both cell phones, an iMac, an M1 mac mini, and any of 7 Linux computers. I am just trying to figure out why my Raspberry PI can see and use via wifi a Gigaspire Blast wifi router and but not the Peplink. I am just puzzled why the Peplink looked different to the Raspberry pi causing the Raspberry Pi to “gray out” the Peplink wifi making it unavailable.

Things to check that can cause this…

  1. Protected Management Frames (PMF)
  2. Fast Roaming
    These features when turned on, can cause a client that doesn’t support them to not be able to connect. I don’t own a rasberrypi, so I don’t know which Wifi features it supports. Check to see if you are using WPA, WPA2 or WPA3.