Is my wifi supposed to be open after turning on/off wifi brodcast?

[JosephHBunker]

I was changing some of my wifi settings and noticed that after switching wifi brodcasting off, any device could connect to my wifi WITHOUT a password even when WPA2 is enabled.

Switching wifi brodcasting back on would not change the statis from open. WPA2 indicates its still enabled yet it still shows as open on my phone.

Restarting from the app/web browser did not solve it either. The ONLY thing that did fix it was to unplug the "Gateway" wait a little than pluging back in.

My biggest question is, is this a HUGE albeit atypical flaw, or is this "part of the process" of flipping the brodcast wifi switch?

I feel like regardless there should be some protection in place to stop somebody from freely connecting to my wifi. Another consideration is it could only be affecting older gateways, tbh I am not sure.

[ComcastBrie]

Hi @JosephHBunker , thanks for reaching out and letting us know about this. Can you confirm what the model number of your Xfinity gateway is? You can reference https://comca.st/37PIb0j to determine which is yours. The model number is also printed on the device itself.

[JosephHBunker]

@ComcastBrie The Model of Gateway is Arris TG1682G

[ComcastMartinR]

Great, thank you so much letting us know @JosephHBunker!

Your XB3 Gateway is still a great, and secure Gateway to have on our network. It is an xFi Enabled device, so can be configured via the Xfinity app, or the direct web portal. The WiFi should maintain it's security when the network, or SSID is hidden. Although hiding the SSID is not generally recommended, and in some cases opens up vulnerabilities to a network. In reseaching this the SSIDs were never designed to be hidden, and when enabled they will always provided a higher security rate.

As far as changing the settings back, would all depend on how much was changed in the configuration. A complete power cycle will normally get things back to defaults, or manufacturer recommendations. 

[EG]

FWIW a power cycle / reboot operation will not reset everything back to factory defaults. Only a hard reset operation using the recessed reset button on the rear will do that. It must be pressed and held in for 25 to 30 seconds.