IPhone – How to enable faster WiFi Roaming with Mac OS X & Airport base stations

airportiphonemacoswifi

How can I change the way Macbooks roam on the WiFi network? I would like to speedup the roaming of Macs (and maybe other devices).

Is there a setting on the Airport base stations or in Mac OS to speedup AP switching for example?

Currently the network is built around 1 main Switch interconnecting 1 router and 4 Airport base stations using the same SSID:

  • 3 dual band Airport base stations
  • 1 Airport 2.4GHz base station

On the 5GHz band, there is no overlap as each base station uses its own channel.

On the 2.4GHz band there is a very slight overlap between 2 base stations which are at opposite sides and at different stories of the building.

Best Answer

You can change the system preferences for JoinMode and JoinModeFallback to be the following:

    JoinMode (String)
        Automatic
        Preferred
        Ranked
        Recent
        Strongest
    JoinModeFallback (String)
        Prompt
        JoinOpen
        KeepLooking
        DoNothing

Do this using the airport command: 

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport

Run the command to see the options, up the top you'll see a section on how to sec preferences.

For instance:

sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport prefs joinMode=Strongest

Note, this preference isn’t permanent, so you may need to automate this or issue it for specific problem situations or network providers.

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