I had to locate the BSSID of Wi-Fi networks for a Microsoft Teams deployment. On Windows, it can be done running PowerShell as Admin and running this command:
netsh wlan show networks mode=Bssid | findstr “BSSID”
Since I’m on a Mac, I needed to find a way to run a similar command using Terminal on the Mac.
Enter “airport”, Apple’s command-line wireless utility. It is named “airport” since Apple’s Wi-Fi settings used to be referred to as “Airport” in previous versions of Mac OS X (it was changed prior to the macOS rename) to match Apple’s Airport Wi-Fi hardware.
This article did the trick. Since I’m on Catalina, I first ran this command to easily use the “airport” command in the Terminal:
sudo ln -s /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport /usr/local/bin/airport
Between running airport -s (which shows the BSSID of every Wi-Fi network one’s Mac can pick up) and airport -I (which shows the BSSID of my currently connected network), I found what I need.
The tools can also provide a wealth of additional raw data as well. For those who need additional details on one’s Wi-Fi network from the command line, give it a try!
Nathan Parker
