Frequently Asked Question

My Mac seems to roam between different wireless networks at frequent intervals
Last Updated 9 years ago

MacOS X appears to roam "aggressively", which means that if it can see multiple access points it will abandon a working connection to pursue another one which might be better. There are locations around the College where it is unavoidable that devices will be in range of many wireless access points, where some Mac laptops behave like undisciplined children in a candy store, and authenticate to one point only to then disconnect and try another. Two things to try that may help are:

  • Under Network preferences->WiFi->Advanced, remove all unused networks except "eduroam" from the "preferred networks" list, and move "eduroam" to the top of the list of the ones you have kept
  • If that fails, and you are comfortable using the Terminal.app you can disable the aggressive roaming from the terminal, with the command:

    sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.airport.opproam disabled -bool true

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