I just looked at my Dell 1300 internal mini-PCI WiFi utility, and it has a Link Information tab that lists the AP's MAC addess - just checked - yup it's the MAC on the bottom label of my Linksys WAP11 (AP not router)
Well, if you're already using Netstumbler, the MAC is a fine way to identify the AP, and probably the only way without watching signal strength and walking around until you find the AP. My problem was getting the MAC of the AP chosen by WZC -- which turned out to be a Schr=F6dinger's cat problem, since anything I did to observe it caused it to change first.
"P.Schuman" hath wroth:
More simply: "Can you connect to an AP by MAC address instead of by SSID"?
The short answer is no. Most client managers connect only by SSID. However, there are a few that will display individual lines in their connection site survey, one for each MAC address. I vaguely recall seeing that on some Netgear client manager, only to have the feature disappear in an update. The problem is that users will check into a hotel that has perhaps a dozen access points, all named "hotel", and call their support person asking "which AP do I use"? When my Netgear was displaying one line per MAC, firing it up in downtown SCZ resulted in a long list of perhaps 40 access points. A different laptop, that only supplied one line per SSID, would show about 30 access points. Incidentally, I was assuming that the Netgear card was more sensitive because it was seeing more access points, until I realized what was happening.
There's all kinds of weird stuff being sent in the 802.11 management frames and their extensions. However, I don't recall if there's anything that's unique to the AP. You're stuck with the MAC address.
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