Corporate Network Survival Guide - How to connect with another Wifi router with the same SSID

  1. Forcing connecting with BSSID

If you found your notebook has WiFi connectivity in a certain area but lost in some area with full WiFi signal, you may be under a faulty WiFi router. There are many routers in an office that share the same SSID so that your notebook determinate the best WiFi router to connect with. However, some may fail over time. Below steps may help if you connect to a faulty WiFi nearby that allows you to connect but does not have proper Internet connectivity,

First, use below command to check which WiFi router you are connecting to?

$ netsh wlan show interface

Take a look on BSSID under SSID. SSID is an ID that could represent more than 1 WiFi router, but BSSID i
s the unique ID for a specific WiFi router,

There is 1 interface on the system:

    Name                   : Wireless Network Connection
    Description            : Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6205
    GUID                   : d827d652-b7f5-412e-xxxx-1235ea895d99
    Physical address       : aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:aa
    State                  : connected
    SSID                   : ABC
    BSSID                  : zz:zz:zz:zz:zz:zz
    Network type           : Infrastructure
    Radio type             : 802.11n
    Authentication         : WPA2-Personal
    Cipher                 : CCMP
    Connection mode        : Auto Connect
    Channel                : 1
    Receive rate (Mbps)    : 144
    Transmit rate (Mbps)   : 144
    Signal                 : 99%
    Profile                : ABC

    Hosted network status  : Not started

The notebook is connected to the WiFi network ABC via router zz:zz:zz:zz:zz:zz. Any router is available under the SSID ABC?

$ netsh wlan show all

Look for SHOW NETWORK MODE=BSSID from the result. It shows all the router available for WiFi network ABC

=======================================================================
======================= SHOW NETWORKS MODE=BSSID ======================
=======================================================================

SSID 8 : ABC
    Network type            : Infrastructure
    Authentication          : WPA2-Personal
    Encryption              : CCMP
    BSSID 1                 : xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
         Signal             : 80%
         Radio type         : 802.11n
         Channel            : 40
         Basic rates (Mbps) : 6 12 24
         Other rates (Mbps) : 9 18 36 48 54
    BSSID 2                 : yy:yy:yy:yy:yy:yy
         Signal             : 76%
         Radio type         : 802.11n
         Channel            : 161
         Basic rates (Mbps) : 6 12 24
         Other rates (Mbps) : 9 18 36 48 54
    BSSID 3                 : zz:zz:zz:zz:zz:zz
         Signal             : 99%
         Radio type         : 802.11n
         Channel            : 11
         Basic rates (Mbps) : 6.5 16 19.5 117
         Other rates (Mbps) : 18 19.5 24 36 39 48 54 156

There are 3 BSSID under SSID ABC, which means there are 3 WiFi routers in range when you trying to connect to WiFI network named ABC. WiFi router with the strongest signals to your notebook is used by default, as it can provide the best connectivity and transfer speed. However, the router with the strongest signal is not configured properly in this case. How do we force the notebook to connect to the router that is working although the signal is weaker? Let’s say we want to connect the router with BSSID xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx


Forcing connecting with BSSID

In windows we can go to control panel and management your WiFi settings. Right click on the WiFi network that you want to connect with, and then select Properties

![BSSID1]BSSID1.png)

In the Wireless Network Properties, check Enable Intel connection settings, then click Configure

BSSID2

Select Mandatory
Access Point
, key in the BSSID that you want to connect with. Click OK to save the settings.

BSSID3

It may be slower as you have poor connectivity due to poor signal strength, but you survive at least before someone fixes the issue.

The above option only works for Intel Wifi adapter. I do not know if other WiFi drivers provide the feature for enforcing BBSID. Let me know if you have found it in another WiFi driver.

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