Connectivity issues with Leviton devices Ruckus Unleashed 200.17.7.0.152

[louis]

I have 7 Leviton smart switches connected to Ruckus Unleashed, 3x DW1KD, 1x D26HD, 2x DW6HD, and 1x D215P. All of these devices have exactly the same connectivity issues with Unleashed 200.16 and later. All of these devices work perfectly with Unleashed 200.15 and earlier. The connectivity problems are worse with Unleashed 200.16.0.402 and 200.17.7.0.139 than with Unleashed 200.17.7.0.152, but the issue is still present in all Unleashed versions 200.16 and later. I'm testing with access point models R850 and R750, the behavior is the same.

Leviton Firmware

Current firmware versions of the Leviton devices (model number - firmware version):

• DW1KD - 1.7.1;CP 1.13
• DW6HD - 1.7.1;CP 1.13
• D26HD - 1.6.6
• D215P - 1.6.6

Unleashed 200.15 and earlier

Leviton switches have no connectivity issues.

Unleashed 200.16.0.402 and 200.17.7.0.139

Leviton switches will initially connect after rebooting the Unleashed system, but will only stay connected for a few minutes to a few hours before disconnecting. Once the Leviton switches have disconnected, they will not reconnect. I've waited days to see if they could eventually recover on their own, but they could not. Rolling back to Unleashed 200.15 permanently fixes the connectivity issues for all of the switches.

Unleashed 200.17.7.0.152

Leviton switches have connectivity issues similar to what I've described for earlier Unleashed releases, but the issues are not as severe. There are two improvements with Unleashed 200.17.7.0.152. First, the switches stay connected much longer, typically hours to days before they lose connection. Second, the switches eventually reconnect on their own after a few hours to a few days. Rolling back to Unleashed 200.15 permanently fixes the connectivity issues for all of the switches.

Client Troubleshooting

I've tried a few things to get these clients to reconnect once they've lost connection with the problematic Unleashed versions:

• Power cycle the Leviton switches. No effect. I cut power to the Leviton switches for 5+ minutes before powering them back on, but they will not reconnect.
• Delete client while client is trying to connect and while client is powered off. No effect.
• Block and unblock client while client is trying to connect and while client is powered off. No effect.
• Power cycle the access point the client is trying to connect to. This allows the client to immediately reconnect, but only temporarily. Eventually the client loses connection again, the problems continue as before.
• Roll back to latest Unleashed 200.15. All issues are resolved, clients have no problems connecting or staying connected.

Following is a screen cap from Unleashed client troubleshooting. It shows one of the Leviton switches after it has lost connection and is trying to reconnect, but cannot. This pattern continues forever and is exactly the same for Unleashed 200.16.0.402, 200.17.7.0.139, 200.17.7.0.152.

Following is a screen cap from Unleashed show details for the same device in the Unleashed client troubleshooting screen cap above. This shows the device during the DHCP negotiation period seen above. The device appears to be unable to acquire an IP address and eventually disassociates itself. I've made no changes to the clients, network, or Unleashed configuration while testing. The only variable has been the Unleashed firmware version that is deployed.

[louis]

10 days and no disconnects. It certainly seems like DPSK is the problem with the newer firmwares. It's interesting that only Leviton devices seem to have an issue with DPSK on the newer firmware. I have several other kinds of devices connected to the wireless network, but I've yet to notice any issues with them connecting using DPSK.

[BobaEnjoyer]

That's very interesting, honestly.  I've sent some feedback to Leviton Support (via their website), and they replied fast and said they would forward to their engineering team, but I haven't heard back yet.  (I wanted their Matter-over-WiFi beta firmware to 100% be local and stop phoning home to Leviton servers on AWS every minute or so.)

DPSK and other vendors' implementations seem really interesting, but I believe they only work with WPA2-Personal, so their days are numbered.  I think WPA3-Personal (SAE) doesn't allow for dynamic pre-shared passwords.  [Edit:  I realize many IoT companies use ancient 802.11n 2.4 GHz radios even in 2025, so we're stuck with WPA2-Personal, hence why it'd be nice for them to work with DPSK.  I get that as well.]

I dunno whether the bug is Ruckus Unleashed changing stuff in 200.16 and 200.17 or if Leviton magically doesn't work with the newer Unleashed firmwares.  We'd have to almost do a packet capture (for days at a time) and drill down.  Sounds tedious haha.

[louis]

Unleashed 200.18.7.1.302 is still just as broken with 1st generation Leviton devices. However, 2nd gen devices seem to be working better on 200.18.7.1.302. Still some flakiness, but they lose connectivity less often, and reconnect faster, it's good enough for me. I swapped out my 1st gen devices for 2nd gen equivalents. I also switched to R770s, but they have the same issues with Leviton devices as the R850s did.

For me, DPSK is the most important feature offered by Ruckus wireless, I switched to Ruckus for DPSK. At the time, Ruckus had the only dynamic VLAN assignment by pre-shared key solution that worked well enough and didn't require licensing fees in perpetuity. There's a lot of confusion going around about DPSK and WPA3, Ruckus' current solution "DPSK3" actually requires a mixed mode WPA2/WPA3 network configuration. Auth happens on WPA2, and the client is allowed to transition to WPA3 while staying on the same VLAN they were assigned by their WPA2 PSK. Sadly, it is only available for Ruckus One and SmartZone. There was a rumor this would come to Unleashed in 200.18, but it did not. It's sad Ruckus has been dodgy about explaining exactly how they're doing DPSK3 leveraging mixed mode. And if you have WiFi 7 enabled APs like the R770s, you can't leverage all performance features of WiFi 7 in mixed mode. So although Ruckus advertises "DPSK3" as enabling DPSK for WPA3, it kind of doesn't, there are too many caveats. It doesn't sound like DPSK will be impossible to implement on WPA3, but it certainly will require a different implementation than what was done for WPA2. Hopefully a solution becomes available from someone, and if not Ruckus, I will be moving on.