SSDR remote and wifi roaming

N7BCP

This evening I tried some remote SSDR from a different area in the house, where there also happens to be a wifi access point, one of two in the house on the same ssid and I noticed my signal strength was incredibly weak given I was sitting right next to the access point. Net tumbler was telling me that I was still connected to the access point on the other side of the house. Enabling airplane mode in windows 8.1 and then disabling I could not get my laptop to connect to the stronger signal. I did some investigation via Google and found this utility http://www.passmark.com/products/wire... which has the future to select an access point in the list of those in receive range so I was able to manually connect to the closer access point - given it is the same ssid there was no way to do this in windows. I was also able to specify the N type over the G. I'm using a Mac book pro and I don't understand why it would not connect to the stronger faster access point and I understand that the algorithm for this differs between manufacturers but I thought I'd pass this utility along to those who may have the same issue. This app is not free, trying the 30 day trial. I could name each of my access points differently but this would defeat the roaming feature that seems to work fine for our other devices. Note that SSDR was dropping out and freezing and showing a poor wireless connection until I redirected my wifi connection to the closer access point at which time SSDR gave a full bars green signal and ran smoothly. -Larry

W6RWC

Do both access points have the same SSID (network name)?  If so, most clients should roam to the strongest signal broadcasting the common SSID.
If they are not named the same, network selection is based on the priority order in which they are listed in your network client.  As long as a higher priority network is accessible, the machine will not switch to another wireless network... even if it has a stronger signal.