How to tell which access point I'm connected to

[ColKurtz]

We have a big wireless dead spot in our living room, the furthest point from the router, so I got a wirless repeater (Linksys WRE54G). I'd like to be able to tell which (mac address) I'm connected to at any one point Is there an easy way to do this under XP?

(I use IBM's Access Connections wireless connection manager, so hopefully any solution wouldn't rely on WZC).

Thanks.

 

[spidey07]

There should be something in the connection manager that tells you the MAC of what you're connected to. properties or statistics, something like that.

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: spidey07
There should be something in the connection manager that tells you the MAC of what you're connected to. properties or statistics, something like that.

Don't you wish...

even most decent utilites can/will hide that info. the best option is to log into the AP/Repeater and see associated clients.


Yes, AP Mac is a required element for CCX, but that doesn't mean you have to be able to see it on the client. Some offer it, some don't. COUGH<broadcom>cough. We have to sniff the packet out of the air and read the elements hex to find the AP IP and/or AP Mac.

 

[Cooky]

can't you do a show arp or arp -a to find that out?

 

[JackMDS]

Well, if you are connected to the repeater you shuoul get strong signal but half of the Bandwidth.

 

[ColKurtz]

Originally posted by: spidey07
There should be something in the connection manager that tells you the MAC of what you're connected to. properties or statistics, something like that.

It does when I scan for them, but once I'm connected I don't see any info about which AP I'm on. .

Originally posted by: Cooky
can't you do a show arp or arp -a to find that out?

Even if I could see the mac addresses of my router and AP, would there be a way to tell which I'm connected to? But to answer your question, I can see the IP address of my router (with associated mac ending in f3:60) when I do an arp -a, but I think that's the ethernet interface - it's not either of the 2 wireless AP addresses I connect to (f3:62 and af:7f).

It's not a big deal to just manually toggle between APs - I thought there would be an easy answer. There are some annoying, related connectivity issues that would have made it easier if I knew which I was currently on, but not a huge deal. Thanks for the replies.

 

[spidey07]

You should be able to force your client to associate to a particular BSSID (mac address).

that would allow you to force the client to a particular AP.

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: spidey07
You should be able to force your client to associate to a particular BSSID (mac address).

that would allow you to force the client to a particular AP.

but then you cannot roam between them.