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