Is it possible to identify individual wireless access points on a single wireless network?

Question

In thinking about the possible implementation of a mobile app that would identify a person's location based on wireless access points, I stumbled across a potential problem.

To put it into context, my university has WAPs in every teaching/lecture room, and this WAP would be used to identify the room they are currently in. However, it could be that that mobile device is in range of more than one WAP at a time - for example, one in the classroom and one in the corridor outside - so I am wondering if there is any way of identifying individual WAPs within range, given that from a UI perspective, often it is just the network itself that is shown?

And if identified could the signal strength of each WAP be measured individually?

Note: This would also need to be usable for guests who likely would not be able to actually connect to the network.

Answer 1

Each AP has its own wifi mac address. Part of the wifi discovery process gets a list of the available networks AND mac addresses for each network, so you should be able to get this from the OS's wifi stack somehow.