Suggestions for working around a neighbour's misconfigured router?

[alyosha]

I currently have the misfortune of living in close proximity to some anonymous person whose router announces a TW country code. Through a combination of unfortunate circumstances, this often has the effect of making my N66U's 5ghz network invisible to Macs, as the Airport network card (madly, inexplicably) determines its location from the first signal it detects and mine often hears the clarion call "TAIWAN!" over all the GBs and the X3 my router seems to announce, which means it adopts Taiwan's permitted frequencies and so stops listening on any of the bands my 5ghz network can use.

Here's what I'm seeing in terms of signals, channels, etc:

Rogue 2.4ghz Network
PHY Mode: 802.11n
Channel: 1
Country Code: TW
Signal / Noise: -79 dBm / -87 dBm

My 5ghz Network
PHY Mode: 802.11n
Channel: 48,-1
Country Code: X3 (though in Wireless Diagnostics, it shows up as EU)
Signal / Noise: -55 dBm / -87 dBm
Transmit Rate: 300
MCS Index: 15

My 2.4ghz Network
PHY Mode: 802.11n
Channel: 6
Country Code: -
Signal / Noise: -48 dBm / -87 dBm​

Some people have resorted to manually binary patching their Mac's network driver to fix this, which I don't want to risk. So for the time being, I've written an applescript package I can run that turns the airport card on and off until it detects a non-Taiwanese country code, but if anyone has any suggestions for what I can do to make my router's signal more likely to be picked up ahead of the Rogue network, it'd be much appreciated.

 

[kvic]

Newer Mac based on broadcom chipset shall not have this problem. Curious what Macs having this issue?

Patching drivers were cool in the old days and preferred way if you ask me. But it's more troublesome in El Cap due to SIP. BTW that Russian folk accomplishing this act is a smart guy..

 

[alyosha]

It's a mid-2012 Macbook Air and an older iMac, though it's nice to know that there's light at the end of the tunnel in the event I get round to upgrading them at some point.

 

[kvic]

mid 2012 macbook air comes with broadcom 943224 module. Seems older broadcom also have this issue then...news to me

I'm pretty sure the newer broadcom 94360CD module doesn't have this issue. All newer Macs come with it or a variant of it.

My old iMac had this issue, and I replaced the atheros module with a 94360CD (quite a surgery). Since then no more this issue..

To my lazy friends, I usually suggest them picking a channel out of a common subset between your region and the rogue AP's region. That also will solve the problem for good. Worth a try maybe.

 

[sfx2000]

Newer Mac based on broadcom chipset shall not have this problem. Curious what Macs having this issue?

Patching drivers were cool in the old days and preferred way if you ask me. But it's more troublesome in El Cap due to SIP. BTW that Russian folk accomplishing this act is a smart guy..

Actually they do... it's a bit of a wreck there...

 

[sfx2000]

I currently have the misfortune of living in close proximity to some anonymous person whose router announces a TW country code. Through a combination of unfortunate circumstances, this often has the effect of making my N66U's 5ghz network invisible to Macs, as the Airport network card (madly, inexplicably) determines its location from the first signal it detects and mine often hears the clarion call "TAIWAN!" over all the GBs and the X3 my router seems to announce, which means it adopts Taiwan's permitted frequencies and so stops listening on any of the bands my 5ghz network can use.

What model of Mac, which OS, and what region/country are you in? What AP vendor are you using (might be your AP, not your client)

I've seen this before, and there ain't much can be done about it... it's not just a Mac problem, other clients on Windows/Linux can have the same issue...

 

[spalife]

Have you come across this blog post ?
Hope it works out for you with the suggested solutions

 

[spalife]

1. On your Mac terminal Run
system_profiler SPAirPortDataType

Looks for settings of en1

2. On your Mac terminal Run
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Resources/airport -s
(you may notice that 802.11d as reported in the post is turned off)

3. login to router through ssh/telnet
nvram get wl0_reg_mode
(you will notice that it is turned off)

nvram set wl0_reg_mode=h
nvram set wl_reg_mode=h
nvram commit
reboot

 

[alyosha]

1. On your Mac terminal Run
system_profiler SPAirPortDataType

Looks for settings of en1

2. On your Mac terminal Run
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Resources/airport -s

(you may notice that 802.11d as reported in the post is turned off)

Snippets:



3. login to router through ssh/telnet
nvram get wl0_reg_mode=h
(you will notice that it is turned off)

nvram set wl0_reg_mode=h
nvram set wl_reg_mode=h
nvram commit
reboot

Ah ha! That blogpost provided the missing piece of the puzzle -- although there is a country code associated with my 5ghz network (if I look at the networks in a diagnostics tool), it seems to have no country code associated with the 2.4ghz network and is also silent on 802.11d, which is what my Macs are paying attention to. As a result, they're either taking their country code from the dreaded Taiwanese router (which would seem, from its SSID, to be an official TalkTalk router, for further wtf value) or a correctly configured router in the vicinity, and crucially never from my router.

I've just enabled 802.11d per your instructions and my 2.4ghz is now showing an EU country code, so hopefully my router will now shout the loudest when my macs are trying to determine what country they're in. What a time we live in; I dread to think what carnage someone might wreak on their neighbours' devices with a powerful 802.11d signal proclaiming KP (North Korea, where no channels are permitted)!

Am I right in thinking that my nvram settings will survive all Asuswrt-Merlin firmware upgrades (apart from the ones that require a factory reset)? And I suppose I should ask, why is 802.11d disabled by default by Asus?

A thousand thanks for your help!

 

[kvic]

I like ideas starting to flow in this thread...but I'm sorry to spoil your short lived moment of eureka..

With spalife's suggestion with goodwill, your chance of a successful association from wake-up increases. Since you'll be experimenting, you'd better change 2.4G band to channel 1 as well. That'll increase your chance of winning the game a bit. I don't know how to do the probability here. I'm pretty sure you're still playing a chance game (as I've gone through before)...perhaps 70% of the time will succeed. The rest.. your Mac will still see the rogue AP first instead, and fails.

 

[kvic]

I usually suggest them picking a channel out of a common subset between your region and the rogue AP's region. That also will solve the problem for good. Worth a try maybe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels

If we look at the 5G channels available to different regions, TW and EU are a very 'special' mix. I usually suggest ppl facing this problem to stick with channel 48. As you can see from the table, it's commonly available to all regions (but TW). So regardless what region your Mac temporarily becomes it'll be able to see the channel and associate with your own AP.

But in your case, 48 won't work. So see if you can look for another common channel between EU and TW (if TW is your only rogue AP). As we could see it's very difficult to pick a common channel if a person lives in a united nations of router world (like I did before).