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Accepted
Robert Siemer
Asked: 2014-09-10 12:30:24 +0800 CST

How to quick select which access point (or BSSID) to use for a given wireless network (aka SSID)?

  • 772

I use NetworkManager with a WLAN that has two access points (same SSID).

Is there a quick way to switch between

  • auto selection
  • force to connect to one specific access point
  • force usage of the other access point

Command line solution is also fine (as long as NetworkManager can keep managing the device).

Edit: some people think I can easily configure different entries and select between those. This is not true: even with two entries (with fixed BSSID each) with different names (but same SSID), the menu only presents one entry (with the name of the SSID) without indicating BSSID or name of the corresponding trusted entry.

wireless

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I don't know of anyway to make the GUI show different connections for different BSSIDs, but the CLI tool, nmcli offers this option:

    con    Connections
       Get information about NetworkManager's connections.
    COMMAND := { list | status | up | down | delete }
    ...
    up id <id> | uuid <id> [iface <iface>] [ap <BSSID>] [nsp <name>]
       [--nowait] [--timeout <timeout>]

    This offers two ways to script a switch in access points:

    1. Two connections, with different UUIDs, each with a BSSID specified in the connection settings.
    2. One connection, with the script using the ap parameter to tell NM to connect to an AP.

    I have never tried either, but both should be equivalent.

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