WARNING: TURN OFF YOUR VPN! Read this guide to fix the "Stuck on Preparing Device" problem!

VPN Forum
1

I’ve had a LIFX Z Strip for a few years. I recently moved and changed router, and was unable to pair the device again. After going insane for 3 hours, forever being stuck on “Preparing Device” while pairing my WiFI with LIFX Z Strip, I finally figured out the issue. It was a combination of a lot of small things that needed to be fixed.

This is a complete guide about all known LIFX WiFi solutions that are known to be necessary and which 100% work. It should be very helpful to anyone with connection issues!

Here’s what you need to do, to give the LIFX devices the best setup:

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Preparation

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  1. Turn off your VPN on your Android/iOS device. This is THE most important fix. With the VPN connection enabled, I spent 3 hours failing to connect the lights to the internet. Turning the VPN off fixed the LIFX light connection instantly. I had tried 3 routers, several versions of the LIFX app, and tons of WiFi settings changes, and was ready to buy Philips Hue until I suddenly realized that the VPN on the phone was the last remaining potential problem. I hadn’t thought of the VPN and it turned out to be the final thing preventing *pairing*. My VPN actually properly passes through all local network traffic and the lights *can* be controlled locally despite the VPN *after* the lights have been synced/added, but the *initial* adding/syncing *doesn’t* work while the VPN is connected, so it’s clear that the LIFX app makes incorrect network assumptions whenever a VPN is involved during onboarding, so keep that in mind. There are however other issues that you need to take care of too, below…
  2. Depending on your WiFi router, you MAY have to disable “band steering” on your router or alternatively split your WiFI into 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz with separate names. As mentioned in many guides such as this great one, and in the official LIFX documentation (here), and in the LIFX app itself, the LIFX devices can only connect to 2.4 GHz. If you have the same SSID for 2.4 and 5, then your router is able to use a non-standardized feature known as “band steering” which will prevent certain devices (such as the LIFX lights) from connecting on the 2.4 GHz band (the only thing hte lights can connect to) if the router *believes* they’re able to use the faster 5 GHz band instead. If this issue affects you, the LIFX devices may LOOK like they’re sometimes successfully connecting, but they MAY periodically get “Cloud: Disconnected” after power-cycling (for me it disconnected twice a day). If this happens to you, then you need to go into your router and look for a “band steering” setting and disable it. If your router doesn’t have that setting, then you need to rename your SSIDs to separate names for your 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi networks, which will automatically disable band steering (since that feature can only be active if the SSIDs, passwords and security modes are totally identical on the 2.4 and 5 GHz networks). Getting rid of band steering either as a setting or by renaming the two SSIDs instantly solves all random LIFX device disconnection issues for a lot of people, me included. Personally, I had a router and bought my LIFX Z Strip, had endless disconnections twice a day for months, then I changed to separate SSIDs and instantly got a stable connection for a year. Then I bought a new router and had forgotten about the SSID issue and instantly had disconnection issues with my LIFX Z Strip again and thought the light was broken, and then I suddenly remembered the SSID issue, changed to two separate SSIDs, and voila perfect connection yet again. It’s unclear whether the LIFX device’s WiFi communication does something weird that tricks the router into thinking 5 GHz is supported, or if the router’s band steering implementation is too aggressive in some routers. But either way, it’s the most likely culprit for this particular disconnection issue, so try this if you’re having disconnections. (Sidenote: There has been a persistent myth that 5 GHz networks with the same SSID interfere with the LIFX lights and confuse them about what frequency to connect to, but that is physically impossible because the LIFX antenna is tuned to 2.4 GHz and doesn’t see any 5 GHz networks at all, so the actual reason for issues with identical SSIDs is most likely band steering, as explained here and in discussions below.)
  3. Go into your Phone’s Settings and FORGET every nearby WiFi network (delete all saved passwords for networks NEAR you; other network passwords that aren’t in your phone’s vicinity can be kept). This is very important, because there’s a stage in the LIFX app where it will connect your phone back to your regular WiFi again, after it’s done sending WiFi settings to your light, and if you don’t forget saved passwords, your phone will connect to a random local network. This will cause the LIFX app to say “blablabla your light and phone are on different networks, you need to connect your phone to the same WiFi SSID”, which then breaks the pairing process. To avoid that, be sure that your phone doesn’t have passwords saved for any other nearby networks. Note for iOS users: On iOS, you can actually “disable auto-join” for specific networks instead of deleting them. There’s no such thing on Android unfortunately, so Android users will have to delete the networks.
  4. Go to the LIFX Cloud Devices page and delete your light if it has previously been paired. This is the page at https://cloud.lifx.com/devices which will list all your devices. Manually deleting the device from your account can help it pair itself again. Otherwise it can get stuck and fail the app pairing process. Update: A commenter below said that deleting the device isn’t necessary. I had seen the advice from a LIFX employee in another thread, so I’m keeping the bullet point here just in case. But be aware that it seems like keeping the device registration in the cloud is fine. So skip this point unless it’s your last resort/attempt at fixing things.
  5. If your light has been connected to another (or incorrect) network: Reset the light itself back to factory defaults, to make it forget its current WiFI network (if any) and to prepare it for syncing/onboarding/adding. Read the official instructions, but basically you just have to unplug and plug in the light 5 times with slow (~3 seconds powered-on each time), steady intervals. It will then give you a flash/color coded signal to let you know that it has been reset. Read the official instructions to know exactly what to do. Note: If the light’s own fake “WiFI access point” disappears/doesn’t exist in your phone’s list of WiFi networks, this indicates that the light is paired to a network and needs to be reset in order to become pairable again. You may also have to do this reset again if you fail the onboarding process by uploading incorrect WiFi SSID/password settings for the device.
  6. Connect your phone to the desired WiFi SSID that you want the lights to use. This is extremely important. Various guides wrongly say “connect your phone to the light’s built-in access point” etc, but that is bad advice (the app will take care of connecting you to the light *when* it’s necessary). The LIFX app expects you to first connect to the WiFi network that you want the lights to use, and ensure that you’re using a 2.4 GHz capable SSID. Ensure that your phone learns the WiFi password for the network, so that it will be able to successfully auto-reconnect to your WiFi network later, when the app’s pairing is complete (see next section in this guide). Because the app’s syncing process for the lights involves your phone re-connecting back to the exact same WiFi SSID as the lights after the attempt at pairing is made, and things won’t work if your phone is on another SSID! The network names for your phone and light must match!

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Pairing

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  1. Do all of the preparation above. All of it.
  2. Log into your LIFX account in the app on your phone, if you aren’t already logged on.
  3. Optional: Delete the light from the app too if it was previously registered, but others (in the comments) have said that they didn’t have to delete the lights before re-adding them. If you have any issues syncing, you may try deleting them though, which is done by tapping on the light, then going into the “…” settings menu, then “Light Settings”, and finally “Remove Device From Cloud” at the bottom. You can also verify that it’s gone from the cloud website afterwards (see “Preparation” section above).
  4. Click the plus symbol and begin the “Add New Device: New Light” process.
  5. Wait for the app to find your light and tap on its name.
  6. The app should ask you for the WiFi password for your phone’s currently active WiFi SSID connection. Give it the password.
  7. Wait. For me, it took maybe 30-60 seconds until the lights suddenly flashed black and then came back on. And then a further 30-60 seconds until the app displayed that the pairing process was complete. Other people have said that it took them about 4 minutes, which sounds very high to me. I would not wait longer than 5 minutes. If it’s not done pairing after 5 minutes, then cancel the process, reset the LIFX device again, and edit your WiFI settings to fix your network (see Preparation section again), because the LIFX device is clearly not able to connect in that case.
  8. The app will then check that your phone’s WiFI SSID is the same as the light’s WiFi SSID. If they don’t match, the app will break/abort here and you’ll have to redo the process (by reading Preparation above to ensure you’re on the same SSID as the light).
  9. After the connection is complete, you simply have to answer which house and room and device name you want to give to the light.
  10. The end. Voila! You’ll have paired lights, and they won’t randomly disconnect in the future. Enjoy!
  11. Bonus: If you were using a VPN on your phone, like me, you can now enable it again. The device control still works. It’s just the initial pairing that goes to hell if you have a VPN, due to poor LIFX application coding.
2

Turn off your VPN on your Android/iOS device. This is THE most important fix

No, it sounds like you just didn’t understand what a VPN is and what it does. Also, some VPNs also pass-through local network traffic, yours did not.

Split your WiFI into 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz with separate names

Bad advice. This only should ever be done for troubleshooting purposes unless you’re already using them separately. You should let devices roam as they wish, from one network to another. Any issues would arise from band steering which LIFX specifically tells you to disable in their troubleshooting steps.

Go into your Phone’s Settings and FORGET every nearby WiFi network

Why? Only forget relevant networks if you have to. No need to forget all.

Go to the LIFX Cloud Devices page and delete your light if it has previously been paired

A light existing in cloud doesn’t affect the onboarding process. Source: I’ve re-onboarded devices tens of times without manually removing them from the Cloud API.

Reset the light itself back to factory defaults, to make it forget any other WiFi networks it previously knew about

Redundant advice. Every LIFX light only ever rememebers the single network it’s been configured for. You can’t change WIFI network it’s connected to, you need to reset the light. Once you reset it, it forgets all past networks.

Connect your phone to the desired 2.4 GHz WiFi SSID that you want the lights to use. This is extremely important.

It’s not. If your phone on 5GHz doesn’t detect lights on 2.4GHz, it means you’ve misconfigured your own network and isolated 5GHz and 2.4Ghz. But I guess that can happen in cheap wifi routers as a result of separating SSIDs.

Delete the light from the app too, which MUST be done if it was previously paired with the app on another WiFi network

I’ve reset lights without deleting them tens of times, nothing will happen if you don’t, it will still be onboarded fine

I mean, it’s good that you got it sorted and it’s good that you posted steps you followed that fixed your issue for you, but these are not “THE STEPS TO FOLLOW”.

I’m willing to say that you probably caused issues for yourself by making changes in settings in the first place

3

Go into your Phone’s Settings and FORGET every nearby WiFi network (delete all saved passwords).

That’s kind of annoying to have to ask people to do. At the very least you can go into each network’s settings on your phone and tell it to not auto-join the network.

4

My two lifx devices ( Z strip and lightbulb) both work with a vpn about 50% of the time however when i turn off the vpn it goes more towards 80%

5

I have tried everything you said got a new ISP/new router modem Wifi 6. Still not solved. Last time when their was a power outage your steps was able to restore my Lifx connection. This kind of headache is unacceptable for a what is suppossed to be a mature Consumer product. My philips hue lights with Hub took exactly 2 minutes to set up, I just put the Hue Hub to the New wifi router that ISP provided me and automatically all lights (14 in total hue lights) connected to the network. 2 minuts to set up hue to a new network,a nd 4 hours for the 3 Lifx lights. Ridiculous.

6

u/lifx This guide also serves as feedback for some fixes for your LIFX app:

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  1. Extremely important app improvement: Make the app detect if the user is connected to a VPN instead of a pure WiFi signal. If so, warn the user that the pairing will not work at all. Because it won’t. (And VPNs are very popular now, so many people, like me, just have it on all the time and don’t even think about it anymore.)
  2. Alternatively, add a text note about disconnecting from VPNs in the pairing GUI, just like your pairing process already has a warning saying that only 2.4 GHz networks are supported. Even a small text notice would have been seen by me and would have saved me 3 hours of pain and torture.
  3. Enhancement: Make the app detect when a WiFi network has a conflicting 5 GHz SSID. This is doable, because apps like NetSpot are able to view all WiFi networks, so clearly there’s an Android API for retrieving a full list of all nearby SSIDs and their speeds etc. If a conflicting 2.4/5GHz network SSID pair is detected, or if it detects that the selected SSID is purely 5GHz, simply tell the user and don’t even let them attempt the pairing. Your lights are only capable of 2.4 GHz with a unique SSID, so automate the process of ensuring this – save them the hassle and pain by improving the app’s intelligence!
  4. When the light has successfully connected to the target network during the pairing process, and your app tells the phone to reconnect back to a known, regular WiFi network, there’s an issue if the phone lands on a different WiFi network than the LIFX device. The app freaks out, warns the user, tells them to switch their phone’s WiFi to the same network as the LIFX device, and then it often gets stuck and won’t resume the pairing process even after you change the WiFI. So… uh… Why? If both WiFi networks are on the same physical network (such as LIFX being on the 2.4 SSID and phone on 5 SSID), and the LIFX device can be found on the local network via device IP, then who cares which network the phone is connected to? This process could be enhanced, to make the device tell your app which local network IP it has, and then as soon as your phone reconnects to regular WiFi, it attempts to connect to the LIFX device IP and checks the serial number. That would be an enhancement to the app experience. And only IF the device IP/serial doesn’t match, THEN you can tell the user that they need to switch phone WiFi networks.
  5. Lastly, please try to provide status indicators in the app. It’s unacceptable that it can be stuck on “Preparing Device” for an hour with zero indication that it’s in fact doing nothing. I suggest implementing a status text that says something like “Sending WiFi configuration to device…” and then “Device attempting connection to WiFi…” etc. Furthermore I suggest implementing a reasonable timeout on the “Preparing Device” prompt, which makes it finally give up after a few minutes and saying that the process failed. I read so many topics here from users who waited an hour on that mindless prompt before they finally gave up. Personally I waited 20 minutes at one point, and was going insane. The app pairing process doesn’t provide enough info to troubleshoot anything. It doesn’t even show the user whether the device is attempting a connection or if it’s idle. Very bad. This should be solvable with a device firmware update and an app update to make the app and device communicate more status messages during the pairing process.
  6. You may even want to try enabling VPN support in the LIFX pairing process. Because the VPN isn’t a problem. A VPN only affects the public internet, and the VPN still allows the phone to connect to all local network devices/services. After pairing is complete, users can still open the LIFX app (even after a fresh restart) and fully control the lights using the speedy local network LIFX LAN protocol (I clearly see rapid light updates). So the VPN itself isn’t the issue. Something in your app’s pairing process makes incorrect assumptions about the network when a VPN is involved and breaks pairing. Fixing the app and adding VPN support should be very simple.

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Out of all this, the 1st/2nd point to alert people about the issue with VPNs is by far the most important, if you do nothing else. But the others would heavily cut down on the amount of hate your app gets. It’s great when it works. Its onboarding/pairing process is terrible… and yet all of the reasons people hate the app/lights is solvable via the app enhancements above, to automate the troubleshooting and network compliance checks.

I love the lights no matter what. But yikes. Wasted 3 hours and was close to switching to Philips Hue instead. The internet is full of thousands of threads hating LIFX and its connection issues. All of that could be fixed by improving the app. I think the app is great in all other ways, with its nice UI and sweet color controls. Just… better pairing… please. I shouldn’t have to waste 3 hours reading forums and troubleshooting for a $200 light strip, especially when it’s all caused by things that the app *could* automatically detect if it was improved.

Really hope you take this feedback to heart and pass it on internally to improve your app. Customers deserve a better experience after paying the LIFX premium for lights.

7

This topic is actually a general guide for every user, since it goes through every WiFi and device solution that is known about these devices. But I labeled the thread regarding VPN just to help people who may search this subreddit and see a bunch of threads without opening them. Therefore the title is meant to highlight the fact that the app completely breaks if a VPN is enabled, and help people see it even if they don’t click on the search result. However, this guide should be very useful to everybody here since it combines all known solutions in a single thread. Have fun!

8

I had the same issue with a few of my bulbs, and this was the solution. I had tried a dozen other wifi config hacks, but somehow the answer was to wait 20 minutes after a reset and then connect my phone from airplane mode. Makes no sense, but it worked. Le’sigh.

From the Lifx support chat bot:

  1. Hardware reset the light (www.lifx.com/reset)
  2. After it resets, set a timer for 20 minutes.
  3. After the 20 mins is passed, enter your phone in airplane mode and connect to your 2.4ghz network
  4. Open the LIFX app—> Click the + sign —> Tap on New Device —> Click New Device —> Tap on the Green Arrow ----> On the bottom corner, Selecy “My device does not show up”
  5. Go to your WiFi network in your Phone settings
  6. Select the light, it will show up as a network and connect to it
  7. Open the LIFX app and the light should appear in the almost done section
  8. Tap on the name of the light and follow the instructions
  9. You should be able to control the light at the point from the LIFX app
9

No, you don’t understand. Stop being an aggressive dick, thanks.

Now I’ll explain why you don’t understand:

  1. I know everything there is to know about how VPNs work and all the different VPN protocols. Yes, they do local network passthrough. Mine does too. That is why I told a person, 1 day ago, that his VPN is not responsible for his unreliable local connection to his lights: https://www.reddit.com/r/lifx/comments/ps4q6a/comment/hdo9pnd/
  2. So yes, local network traffic to the light works properly even when a VPN is enabled.
  3. However, VPNs COMPLETELY BREAK the onboarding/light adding process. Perhaps due to the VPN trying to inject itself into the fake WiFi network created by the lamp. The issue only happens when you’re connected to the phone’s fake WiFI network (during onboarding), and not when you’re on your real WiFi nework afterwards.
  4. As for splitting networks: I had a discussion with someone else in the comments and it does seem like band steering is the real culprit. When two SSIDs are identical, routers are able to use band steering and reject 2.4 GHz connections if they think the device seems capable of 5 GHz instead. I’ve had to do that on two different routers from two brands, and it instantly makes the light’s connection rock solid. This is well known advice, but it does seem like turning off band steering would be enough, if your router supports toggling the feature. And certain routers have “calmer” band steering which doesn’t kick off the lights. I have already changed that part of the guide to be clearer that it’s only necessary if the lights constantly lose connection (mine lost it twice per day).
  5. Forgetting all networks: I think people would be smart enough to realize that forgetting only the local networks is enough. My guide (even the part you quoted) literally never said “forget all networks”; it said that you need to forget/disable all nearby networks: “1. Go into your Phone’s Settings and FORGET every ***nearby*** WiFi network (delete all saved passwords).” So for someone who loves nitpicking, you sure missed a very obvious word that says exactly what you advised, in the exact portion you quoted. Meh.
  6. Regarding not having to remove lights from the cloud if they fail to connect to the cloud: I saw that advice from a lifx employee somewhere here on this subreddit, but I’ve crossed out that advice and noted that it’s not necessary.
  7. Regarding the light only knowing about 1 network, not multiple, so there’s no risk of it remembering multiple passwords: I suspected that the lights worked that way, thanks for clarifying; I’ve edited that section accordingly.
  8. Regarding your phone having to be on the exact same SSID as the lights: This is a fact. The app will completely stop the onboarding process and explicitly yells at you if your phone’s SSID name mismatches the light’s SSID. But if your 2.4 and 5 networks have identical SSID names it may still work. I’ll add that note.

Next time, there’s no need to be super aggressive. You can contribute without acting that way. Thanks for the help! I’ve done some very minor changes based on your feedback, and the guide is better as a result. I am grateful that you took the time.

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u/dark_skeleton - based on my experience with onboarding my >20 bulbs multiple times, u/GoastRiter 's input is more helpful / accurate than your confrontational suggestions.

I use AdGuard on my phone which uses a VPN method to filter traffic. It has caused tons of issues when onboarding hardware so I now turn it off every time I onboard something like a LIFX bulb. It might be a configuration issue (for example it might be possible to exclude the app that is onboarding the hardware but the point is that is DOES cause issues and it is much simpler to just turn it off to be sure).

My network is based on a few thousand dollars of Ubiquiti’s Unifi hardware. My router is a Unifi Dream Machine Pro, and my wifi is provided by 4 APs which broadcast SSID_5GHz, SSID_2.4GHz, SSID_IoT and SSID_Guest. Most of my IoT devices are on the IoT SSID which is 2.4GHz only. Devices that need higher bandwidth (media, PCs, etc) are connected to the SSID_5GHz network. My equipment has the band steering feature and it was a pain! I kept finding devices I wanted connected to 5GHz on the 2.4GHz band (I used to have both 2.4GHz and 5GHz SSIDs with same name to allow roaming between the two). Why it mattered? Throughput… with 1Gbit up/down fiber connection, I wanted to ensure max speed on specific devices.

Issues I face when onboarding LIFX bulbs are related to the bulbs connecting to IoT specific SSID and VLAN. My phone keeps going back to the main SSID so the onboard process hiccups. While I could momentarily make the IoT SSID my default and forget the main one, I just manually connect my phone to the correct SSID during the process. Not ideal but it works. The different VLANs are a big pain too. The default is for them to not block inter-VLAN traffic but for whatever reason it makes discovering/adding devices so much hardware. I suspect that Unifi has some unresolved issues in this area due to other similar issues I’ve noticed (unrelated to LIFX). I also have to research inter-VLAN routing to see if there is anything I can do to facilitate discovery… Even Home Assistant could not find the bulbs on the other VLAN without me adding the list of broadcast IPs, essentially telling it where to find them… This, apparently, was not just my setup but a normal issue.

In the past, I had nightmares with the LIFX bulbs and deleting them from the cloud actually helped. I believe that was of help when I split my network in multiple SSIDs and VLANs and was therefore in the process of moving all the bulbs over. It was a painful process.

11

There’s no such thing as “telling an Android phone not to auto-join a specific network”. It has two states for each network:

  • Saved networks (saved WiFI passwords),
  • or deleted/not saved network.

The only way to prevent auto-joining the wrong network on Android is to delete the networks.

Maybe iOS devices have the ability to disable auto-joining of specific networks, but Android 10 doesn’t. Are you on iOS? If so, please let me know the steps to disable auto-joining and I’ll add them to the guide.

Edit: Are these steps still correct for iOS? I’ve linked to this from the guide now, with a special note for iOS users. How to stop auto-join Wi-Fi on iPhone, iPad, Mac - iGeeksBlog

12

Concur. I have my IoT SSID memorized on my phone but it is set not to connect automatically. Issue for me is that my phone re-connects to the high bandwidth 5GHz SSID during the process so when I see it hang up, I simply switch it manually to the correct SSID instead of moving the phone over to the IoT SSID temporarily.

13

This kind of headache is unacceptable for a what is supposed to be a mature Consumer product. My philips hue lights with Hub took exactly 2 minutes to set up, I just put the Hue Hub to the New wifi router that ISP provided me and automatically all lights (14 in total hue lights) connected to the network. 2 minuts to set

14

A VPN could definitely interfere with local network traffic. Which is how the app communicates with the lights (via local UDP packets).

But a properly configured VPN won’t interfere, because it will set up the device’s IP filtering to let all local network traffic be transmitted totally unmodified, by detecting that the destination IP (the light) is on the same subnet as your own local network connection.

Basically, any traffic to/from the light will pass through completely unaffected by the VPN, and won’t be routed via the VPN.

This “local network passthrough” is an essential part of modern VPNs, because customers need to be able to protect their internet connection while still having totally working local networking.

Therefore, VPNs should not (and all good ones don’t) interfere with controlling the lights. And mine doesn’t. I can control the lights perfectly when the VPN is enabled on the phone. The packets are reaching the lights properly.

The guide was about actually *connecting* and pairing the lights with the app for the first time, in which case the VPN completely breaks the process. Most likely because LIFX have programmed their app to do some stringent network/IP checks that fail when a VPN is involved.

PS: Since you say that you still have bad connectivity even when the VPN is disabled, the issues are most likely just a coincidence. You should investigate the other networking reasons in this thread to see if anything helps. I had spotty connections just like you, until I separated the SSIDs. This happened on two different routers, and both needed SSID separation. The LIFX instantly became rock solid on both routers after I separated the SSIDs.

15

Your lights are only capable of 2.4 GHz with a unique SSID

This is not true, or at least seems to be dependent on the router and/or settings. For instance, I have a pretty standard Google Nest Wifi mesh router setup with same SSID for 2.4GHz/5GHz and have literally never had any problems with connectivity whatsoever.

16

It’s amazing that LIFX’s product owners still have jobs at all, this guy just did a huge amount of work for the company for free.

17

I won’t hold my breath because in LIFX time these changes may take 5 to 10 years, but I can hope they will listen.

I believe it took them at least 3 years to implement the return to previous state upon power cycling the bulb. I lost count of how many times I woke up in the middle of the night with the d@rn LIFX bulbs on.

18

Seriously, LIFX should send you some free lights.

19

Why in the world are you connected to a VPN from your mobile on a home network? What a waste, speed slowdown, and potential privacy invasion.

20

As I said already, do whatever works for you, mate. Calling me an aggressive dick made me chuckle tho, are you trying to prove yourself? I was neither aggressive nor a dick.

1-3: my main point was that having a VPN enabled was your own doing
4: ok cool
5: I quoted your exact words by the power of ctrl+C and ctrl+V, so there’s that. You did say “NEARBY” though, still shouldn’t be required
6: This advice was probably for something else and I’m sure it might be useful in certain scenarios, like when something keeps accessing the cloud and trying to change light settings where it shouldn’t
7: ok cool.
8: Again, something that you have to correct for due to your own actions (separating SSIDs)

I’m not being aggressive, you’re just being overly defensive. It’s okay to want to prove yourself, it’s not okay to call others aggressive dicks. If I wanted to be aggressive (or a dick), you’d be seeing a completely different style of a comment.