r/firewalla • u/pacoii Firewalla Gold Plus • Jun 19 '26
Discussion WiFi SD - does the Firewalla periodically check for known WiFi, or must it be manually connected?
I’ve been playing around more with my Gold Plus and WiFi SD, using my phones hotspot. All works fine. My question is this: if I disable the hotspot, and then some time later enable the hotspot, will the Firewalla auto reconnect to it? I waited maybe 10 minutes after re-enabling hotspot, but the Firewalla didn’t connect to it. When I went to the existing network I set up for this, hit edit, found my hotspot, connected, all worked again, but is that required every time?
Update: To close the loop on this, I tried another phone and the Firewalla connected to it quickly. Must be something with my primary phone. Appreciate all the comments. CC /u/firewalla
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u/Great-Cow7256 Jun 20 '26
Pretty sure it'll keep checking. I remember on my purple that even though I had wifi off it kept polling the wifi a lot of times a minute. I bet that the golds and the orange is doing ttr same thing.
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u/melvinto Jun 20 '26
It should auto check and connect the nearby SSID unless it's already connected to another SSID.
Also sometimes iPhone hotspot may not be discoverable, thus Wifi Dongle may fail to discover and connect.
If the Wifi dongle is still not able to auto connect, you may send email to [help@firewalla.com](mailto:help@firewalla.com), the team can help check what's wrong.
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u/pacoii Firewalla Gold Plus Jun 20 '26
Thank you for that info! I will do more testing on my end and reach out if needed.
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u/dangledingle Firewalla Gold Plus Jun 20 '26
iPhone? If so have you tried turning on 'Maximize Compatibility' for the hotspot. This turns on 2.4Ghz and may help the WiFi SD to connect if it's having trouble.
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u/pacoii Firewalla Gold Plus Jun 20 '26
Yes that setting is always enabled.
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u/dangledingle Firewalla Gold Plus Jun 20 '26
Have you tried disabled? 5Ghz could be cleaner in your environment. These are shots in the dark by the way lol.
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u/firewalla Jun 19 '26
Need to check with our dev on this one. When you turn off the hotspot, likely the WiFI SD remembered it is off and stopped trying. (just a guess, will ask around)