AirCheck™ SSID AP Troubleshooting

 

it is quite common to have several physical access points support the same SSID. Every vendor has its own way of handling handoffs and in most cases, it works pretty well. But what do you do when you suspect one access point is causing an issue?

I don’t care which operating system you are using; it is very difficult to select one physical access point to connect to. I should know, I tried for hours with Android and several Windows applications with no luck.

When I’m validating a firewall, I don’t bother digging through the rule base first—I go straight to Wireshark. It’s the fastest way for me to see what the firewall is actually doing instead of what someone thinks it’s doing. Config files can lie, documentation can be outdated, but packets don’t fake it. So I fire up a capture on the client side and start generating some basic traffic to see what gets through.
The first thing I look for is whether my test traffic even makes it past the firewall. I’ll send out DNS queries, HTTP requests, maybe a quick ping, and watch the capture to see if the packets leave the machine and whether I get responses back. If I see SYN packets going out with no SYN‑ACK coming back, that’s usually my first hint that the firewall is dropping or blocking something. Wireshark makes it obvious because the failed handshake sticks out like a sore thumb.
Once I’ve identified what’s being blocked, I dig into the details. I’ll filter down to the specific protocol—TCP, UDP, whatever—and follow the stream if it exists. If it doesn’t, that tells me a lot too. Sometimes I’ll see the firewall silently dropping packets, and other times I’ll see ICMP “destination unreachable” messages coming back. Either way, Wireshark gives me the raw truth about how the firewall is behaving.
After that, I validate the traffic that should be allowed. I check DNS resolution, make sure HTTP or HTTPS flows normally, and confirm that the client can reach the networks it’s supposed to. When everything lines up, I can see the full conversation in Wireshark—clean handshakes, proper responses, and no weird retransmissions. It’s a quick sanity check that the firewall rules aren’t overly restrictive or misconfigured.
By the time I’m done, I’ve usually validated the firewall in just a couple of minutes. Wireshark gives me a real‑time view of what’s happening, so I don’t have to rely on assumptions or wait for someone to dig through a messy rule set. It’s hands‑down the easiest way for me to confirm that the firewall is behaving the way it’s supposed to.