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I'm in a location with a number of WiFi stations for the SSID, but the one closest to me reboots every few minutes which drops any existing connections. My MacBook proceeds to connect to a weaker, more stable connection, but reverts to the unstable station and the process repeats. Ideally, the owners would simply fix or disable the station, but it has been months now.

Is there way to prevent my MacBook from connecting to this specific station and instead to pick up a weaker but more stable station?

DavidRecallsMonica
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Kurt
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  • You should just be able to delete the login credentials for the unstable wifi network so that the Mac can never connect to it. – fsb Mar 11 '24 at 17:14
  • @fsb that’s unfortunately the network the OP needs to connect to. He needs to connect to a different AP – Allan Mar 11 '24 at 18:41
  • @Allan I don't see the 'needs to connect' from the OP's question, I only see a 'wants to connect'. Removing the credentials or unchecking 'automatically join this network' should fix the problem. – fsb Mar 11 '24 at 22:12
  • It’s the first sentence and title. He is connecting to a network with multiple APs for one SSID. He was trying not to connect to that particular AP closest to him. If he goes somewhere closer to another AP, it works, even though the signal is weaker – Allan Mar 11 '24 at 22:17
  • @Allan is correct. I would like to (need to?) connect to the network, but avoid the defective AP. – Kurt Mar 13 '24 at 12:29
  • Thanks @Kurt. The answer is to specify the BSSID when connecting, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. Plus, I’m not in a location to test it out – Allan Mar 13 '24 at 12:34
  • macOS, at one time, used to allow you to specify a BSSID (base station) to manually connect to, but since 10.5, they removed that capability. Unfortunately, there’s no solution for this. See: https://apple.stackexchange.com/q/131852/119271 – Allan Mar 22 '24 at 13:30
  • Thanks @Allan for that link. I’ve edited it into my “no” answer – bmike Mar 22 '24 at 17:41

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Aside from moving further away from the station you know is problematic or choosing an entirely different SSID/network you’re out of luck with a technical solution on the client side unless you have 10.5 era hardware and software.

bmike
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