Have you successfully migrated your WPA2-Personal SSIDs to WPA3-Personal security? Is your home Wi-Fi running WPA3-Personal only, or are you still using WPA2-Personal? For most of us, the reality is somewhere in between—either using WPA3-Personal Transition Mode or sticking with WPA2-personal for device compatibility issues.

In this post, I’ll provide an overview of WPA3-Personal Compatibility Mode—a feature introduced to resolve connectivity issues for legacy clients when operating in WPA3-Personal Transition Mode. If you like to spend 15min you can watch this video to understand it.

In WPA3-Personal Transition Mode, you need to include multiple AKM values, unicast encryption ciphers, and broadcast encryption ciphers in the RSN (Robust Security Network) Information Element (RSNE). Common AKM values used for personal security is shown below

Legacy WPA2-Personal clients may not be designed to interpret these additional elements in the RSNE, which can result in some devices refusing to associate with the WLAN. To address this issue, the IEEE introduced a feature called RSN Override. This feature minimizes the RSN Information Element to essential parameters while adding an additional RSN Override element to include extra AKMs and encryption ciphers required for Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 client connectivity.

RSN Override is now part of the official Wi-Fi Alliance WPA3 Specification (introduced in v3.4), ensuring interoperability testing for modern Wi-Fi devices. Do you think both enterprise and consumer AP vendors will implement this feature anytime soon? Since Personal security is primarily used in home environments, I would expect consumer vendors to adopt this feature earlier.

I need your help! If you’ve already worked with the WPA3-Compatibility Mode feature (and if vendors have implemented it in their products), please share your experience. I’m preparing a presentation on this topic for the upcoming WLPC conference in Prague, October 14–16, 2025. I’d love to include real-world adoption details in my talk. If you have insights or experience with WPA3-Compatibility Mode,Drop me an email at rasika[at]mrnnetworks.com.