How to find MAC address of WAP I'm connected to?

Hi,

I've just dropped Belkin F5D7230 on to my already established network. Previously I'd had a F5D7130 connected to a Netgear FSV318, everything was working swimmingly but I had some poor patches in the garden and the other end of the house. The F5D7230 is a router style product but can operate in AP mode, I've done that, configured it with the same security/password, SSID and channel as the original AP, I've added the MAC address of the new AP to the MAC-ACCESS list in the bridge configuration section of the original AP also.

I think everything is working, KISMAC displays two AP's with the different MAC addresses, giving different signal strengths, on the same SSID and channel. My Mac Book connects to a single SSID and I can surf the net.

I'm now looking for conclusive proof that I'm connected to the new AP and not the old one, signal strength indicates I am, but that could be solar flares

Is there any way I can tell what the MAC address of the SSID I'm connected to, also, what determines which AP my MacBook selects, given they've both got the same SSID, does it pick the stronger signal strength by itself?

Thanks for reading such a long post.

Andrew

You can download the freeware NetStumbler which will give you that information. There may be easier ways but I don't know of them.

Just an update, a second laptop is showing full signal strength but isn't being assigned a DHCP IP address. Using the Internet Connect tool of OSX I can see the BASE-ID for airport, which in my case is the MAC address for the old AP, the machine that can't get an IP address is connected to the new AP.

This solves one problem, I now know conclusivley what the MAC address of the AP I'm connected to is, however, the problem now arises that I've obviously screwed the config up, as the second AP isn't passing through a DHCP address from the Netgear.

Any suggestions, of all my problems I didn't expect this one, I'd have though that DHCP relay would be automatic.

Thanks (again)

Andrew

I dunno ask Belkin!

Won't the windows wireless network manager tell you. The ThinkVantage Access Connections wireless network manager that I use on my IBM ThinkPad certainly does.

right click on your wireless card icon in the status bar, left click on status,click on support,then click on details, you should have the physical address there.
hope this helps

Yes it does, thank you. I wasn't quite clear whether the original poster wanted the MAC of the access point or the MAC of his wireless card. In the end I plumped for him wanting the MAC of the access point. Yours is a much quicker way of finding the MAC of his wireless card.

Hi,

I was originally after the MAC address of the AP, I've now managed to find this using the Internet Connect.app. In case it wasn't clear in my first post, I'm using an Apple Mac Book Pro.

Now that I've got this, my next problem is the new AP doesn't appear to pass through the DHCP client address like the original AP does. Is this normal behaviour? I can connect to the point but I don't get an IP. When I'm connected to the original AP I can ping the new AP wireless so the bridge must be up.

Thanks

Andrew

Way beyond my knowledge I'm afraid. If you don't get any response here it might be worth posting the question on the Mac forum (give it a chance here first though).