Re: Finding MAC address of currently connected AP

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Rick Onanian <groups.theholycow@xxxxxxxx> hath wroth:

Running XP, using the wireless zero configuration service, I need to
find out the MAC address of the access point that I'm connected to.
Netstumbler and similar programs can give me a list of all APs in
range, but can't seem to tell me which AP was connected by WZC. How
can I get the MAC of the AP that Windows chose?

That's actually more difficult than it would seem. If you use the
results of:
arp -a
you'll only get the MAC and IP address of the default gateway, not the
connected wireless access point.

You could cheat and ping the management IP address of the access point
followed by:
arp -N "IP_address_of_access_point"

Vista greatly expanded the wireless diagnostic status options with the
various:
netsh wlan etc...
incantations. For example:
netsh wlan show networks mode=bssid
or something like that, will show the available network connections
with the BSSID (MAC address) of the access points. I don't have a
Vista box handy to decode the incantation required to extract the
currently connected access point.
<http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/library/f435edbe-1d50-4774-bae2-0dda33eaeb2f1033.mspx>

In order to get the MAC address, it would need to come from the WZC
program, or possibly the NDIS drivers for your wireless device. Some
alternative drivers and wireless configuration utilities, such as
Intel Proset, show the MAC address with the connection info. I think
(not sure) the WZC status page (right click on the icon in the system
tray or control panel) has the connected MAC address.

I think the simple, yet bigger question is -
How can you tell the AP's apart for let's say a site survey or rogue AP's
when using a central controller and remote dumb AP's like Aruba or others...

It's an interesting question overall.... hmmm
Is there any other identifier that is transmitted that could be unique and
picked up by Netstumbler ?



.

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