Car WiFi connection - what does it actually need?

[Mattallica]

I've got my car on order, and I'm just getting organised ready for it's arrival (it sounds like a bloody baby!). Where our driveway is situated is currently a null-zone for my mesh wireless network, purposefully-so, to prevent any form of unauthorised access/or attacks from the pavement/road outside.

I'm curious as to what sort of connection is needed for the car - would a straight-forward internet connection suffice, or does it need to be on the same network as my mobile?

Also, what specification of Wifi is required? 2.4GHz, 5GHz? what level security? etc etc

 

[jjrandorin]

It only needs wifi to download updates (at a minimum). It will connect to 2.4 or 5GHz networks, but "seems" to work better on 2.4 networks, which could just be a function of the better range of 2.4 over 5 Ghz. It doesnt need the additional speed of 5Ghz.

It does not need to be on the same network as your phone. The car does not need to be on wifi for you to be able to access it with your phone. If you want to setup an IoT network or something for it on your home network, you certainly can do that.

I use WPA2, which works fine. I suspect any of the standard home network protocols would work, or so would setting up a separate network on your network for it if thats something you want to do.

 

[DeltaOne]

Where our driveway is situated is currently a null-zone for my mesh wireless network, purposefully-so, to prevent any form of unauthorised access/or attacks from the pavement/road outside.

We got our Model 3 in late March. The WiFi signal on the carport and in the driveway was weak. Our current WiFi access point, a UniFi AC Pro, is mounted in the center of the house and is about four years old. We've been very happy with its performance.

We had been thinking about upgrading our WiFi access point anyway, so we purchased a new model (UniFi Access Point U6 Lite) and put it where the old one was mounted. Ran a new ethernet cable to the carport and mounted the AC Pro there.

The new U6 Lite performs even better than the one it replaced. And the old AC Pro works great for the Model 3. Since the Model 3 is parked directly under the access point, we set its power output as low as possible (to limit how far the signal would go...we only need it to go about six feet!).

And we used our router to set up a special VLAN for the IoT stuff around. The Model 3 is on the IoT VLAN. Our iPhones and iPads use the "regular" network, not the IoT VLAN and everything works fine.

Setting up a VLAN requires special hardware and it's a bit tricky. Most all WiFi has easy to set up Guest access, so I'd use that. You'd want Guest access that is walled off from the "regular" network. And some Guest access allows the use of a password...so even better.

 

[UnknownName]

2.4 and 5ghz both work fine.

However, vendors are starting to default to using "Protected Management Frames" (PMF), which Tesla doesn't appear to support. Unifi, for example, by default sets PMF to "Required" in a new Unifi Wifi network. You've got to set this to "Optional" or "Disabled" in the wifi settings configuration in Unifi. This setting applies to both 2.4ghz and 5ghz networks.