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sclarckone

Member

Registered: 2011-10-05

Posts: 22

[SOLVED] Connect to an AP by MAC address & Change NM behavior

Hello guys,

Here is my situation: I'm currently connected to the Internet through public hotspots. The problem is that sometimes I can get a connection at the first try and sometimes I have to try for half an hour. Eventually I found out that it's because a lot of hotspots (14) in my vicinity have exactly the same SSID (i.e FreeWifi because they are all public hotspots activated by an ISP on its customers' boxes) but since a couple of them are closer (and thus have a stronger signal), I'd like to connect to these ones only.

So first question, is there any way to connect to an access point by specifying its MAC address rather than its SSID? I've taken a look at wpa_supplicant.conf man page, but didn't find anything about MAC addresses.

A workaround would consisit in blacklisting the AP MAC addresses I don't want to connect to (networlkmanager.conf man page) but maybe there is a more straightforward way of doing it...

Then I have another problem which is somehow related to first one. Within the 14 access points with the same SSID, only 2 of them seem to be working fine for me. So I'm usually connect to either one of these 2 access points. The problem is Networkmanager often switch from one to the other and everytime it happens, I lose my connection since I have to re-identify myself. I guess it might be because the signal strength is fluctuating and that Networkmanager automatically switch to another known access point with a stronger signal (and in this case there should be a thresold configured somewhere).

Is my guess right? In this case, is there any way to inhibit this behavior?
Once again, I could do the same as suggested earlier (i.e blacklist the MAC address of one of the 2 acess points) but once again there may be a more elegant way.

Thanks for your help!

Last edited by sclarckone (2012-03-13 08:24:19)

Strike0

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2011-09-05

Posts: 1,429

Re: [SOLVED] Connect to an AP by MAC address & Change NM behavior

Have a look at the "BSSID" field in your networkmanager configuration for the hotspot. You can configure the mac from the applet. Alternatively, have a read at the option "ap" and managed mode of iwconfig.

sclarckone

Member

Registered: 2011-10-05

Posts: 22

Re: [SOLVED] Connect to an AP by MAC address & Change NM behavior

Simple and works perfectly. Thanks!