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Force My Mac To Connect To Specific BSSID

first of all, let me congratulate you for your wonderful web site.
Your videos are very helpful. You do a very great job !
And I’d like to thank you very much for that.
This is my question :
I can connect my Mac to a free wifi network (hotspot) provided by my ISP when I’m not at home.
For that, I just have to select the network name that the Mac detects and then to enter an ID and a password.
But some times, my Mac can’t connect to internet.
I’ve noticed that it happens on some BSSID whereas on some others I can connect my Mac without any problem.
Is there a way to choose on which BSSID my Mac can connect (when there are several BSSID that have the same SSID) ? In other words, can I specify a Mac address on which my Mac can connect (maybe using the Terminal) ?
Sorry for my explanations, I hope I was clear enough :) lol
thanks a lot.
—–
maninthemirror

Comments: 2 Responses to “Force My Mac To Connect To Specific BSSID”

    12 years ago

    I don't know. I'm not that familiar with BSSIDs. So this would be when there appears to be one network, but there are several wifi devices that create that network? Like in a school or conference center?
    I don't know of a way to select exactly which device your Mac uses. And I don't know if it makes a difference.
    On the other hand, if they appear as different networks when you click on the wifi icon in your menubar, then you can just select the one you want. If your Mac tries to connect to the wrong one, then just refuse that connection and switch to another by clicking on the wifi icon.

    Michael A.
    12 years ago

    Great question. I had to look up what a BSSID was, but now that I follow your question I actually have a similar issue that I bet is pretty common: my Airport provides both 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks with the same SSID, and I want my 802.11n devices to always connect to the 5GHz network, yet often I notice my MacBook has connectded to the 2.4GHz network.

    It's nice that the Network pref pane lets you specify which SSIDs your machine will automatically connect to, but for better security it would be nice if it could further restict auto-connecting to known base stations. This would prevent accidental connections to malicious SSID-spoofing networks. Perhaps one of the fine WiFi scanning applications (such as KisMAC) will add the ability to manage your WiFi connection and give you more control over these things.

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