How to pick primary router instead of extender on a mac.

[Kazuya_Namikaze]

Thank you for taking the time to view my thread, firstly... My sister got herself a extender for when she works at home, which is fine. But my Macbook pro keeps connecting to the extender which wouldn't be a problem if everyone wasn't on that, which causes massive slowdown and disconnects me randomly at times. Pretty much, I want to just keep my connection to the primary and avoid the clutter on the extender, as my PS4 stays connected when everyone is using the internet... It definitely has to be that, since it is using a ethernet connection... So, without ethernet how do I avoid connecting to the extender?

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Unless the extender has a different (or modified) SSID compared to the router SSID, you cannot choose one over the other.

Have a look on the extenders configuration utility. You may be able to change it's SSID so you'll know which of the two devices you're connecting to.

My Netgear extender automatically gave me two modified SSIDs (separate dual bands) which are almost the same as the two router SSIDs except the extender SSIDS have _EXT tacked on to the end. So everyone knows exactly which of the four SSIDs to connect to according to which room they're sitting in.

I'm surprised your router SSIDs and extender SSIDs are the same if that's what you're saying.

Having said that, whichever one you connect to wirelessly, you'll still suffer slowdowns when everyone's using WiFi. You're all using the same network no matter who'se connected to what, and ethernet will always get the lions share by virtue of it being a much more stable & direct.