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August 29, 2006

tips

A trick for dealing with same name wireless networks

Posted Aug. 29, ’06, 11:24 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Tips

Wireless networksYou’ve probably joined a wireless network or two in your day, so I’m sure you’ve noticed that many people don’t bother changing the name of their wireless access points (also known as an SSID). My AirPort menu is littered with networks named “default,” “wireless,” “NETGEAR,” and the ever popular “linksys.” Given this, a friend asked me if OS X’s AirPort menu displayed multiple wireless access points that use the same SSID.

The answer, as far as I can tell, is no, but here’s a little trick. If this is the kind of scenario where you’re trying to join a nearby base station, but keep getting bumped to another with the same name, hold down the “option” key when you click the AirPort menu. This orders the available networks by strength, instead of alphabetically, and you should get the stronger of the access points with the same name. Of course, if you’re trying to join the weaker, you may be out of luck.

The best fix to this is to remember to change your SSID, and pretty much all access points let you pick your own network game. This is good not only for solving the duplicate SSID problem, but also for security. At the same time, the hardware is certainly capable of detecting multiple networks with the same name, so this seems to me to be a quirk of OS X’s AirPort menu. Software like iStumbler can show you all the networks that might share the same name—one would hope Apple might come up with a solution that allows a little more flexibility.


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