Roaming thresholds and aggressiveness on AirPort

I have a problem with my AirPort adapter wanting to "roam" between access points that are broadcasting the *same SSID*. Please note that my problem is NOT switching between two different SSIDs. My problem is associating with one AP, whose signal is the strongest of three that are within radio reach of my laptop, then switching to another AP, whose signal happens to be broadcasting stronger for a few minutes, then switching back to the other AP, etc., etc. This happens many times an hour and destroys my web sessions because I'm being NAT'd behind a different public IP each time I switch to another AP.

The solutions are: 1.) move closer to one of the APs, 2.) move one of the APs closer to me, 3.) restrict my mac from associating to 2 of the 3 APs so that I'm only allowed on one of the three APs, or 4.) reduce the tendency of my AirPort adapter in my MacBook to "roam".

#1 isn't feasible because my apartment is small and there really are only so many places that I can put my couch, chair or desk - the places where I use my laptop. Also, it seems as though I would still have the issue because the signals from each AP seems to be equally strong throughout my apartment.

#2 isn't feasible because I spoke to the ISP that is supporting the wireless network and they said there are limited places to mount the APs due to access issues, Ethernet issues and spacing issues throughout the entire building. They want to help but aren't able to because of physical limitations...sort of like my own limitations within my apartment - there are only so many good places to put a desk, couch or chair, whatever.

#3 isn't feasible because the ISP says the vendor only supports network-wide blacklisting. They can't block me from associating to just an AP. They can only blacklist my mac-address from the entire network. It's supposedly an "intelligent" mesh network of Meraki access points. But not that intelligent.

#4 seems to be the closest to a possibility that I would be able to have in my control. My friend's DELL wireless adapter has "roaming decision" and "roaming tendency" settings that we tweaked and his problems immediately ceased. He stayed associated to an access point for hours on end after we reduced the roaming aggressiveness. More details can be found here: http://support.dell.com/support/systemsinfo/document.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&~file= /network/wlan/en/ugen/props.htm#toc89 Also, if you google "roaming decision" or "wireless roaming sensitivity", all of the results are about the Dell's ability to allow you to control this behavior. Most of the responses I got from Apple on the subject are "Naturally, you would want to connect to the strongest signal." But my argument is that the signal of on AP is only stronger for a few minutes, then another signal trumps that one, and I break association with the first AP and associate with the new AP, lose all of my web sessions, then associate back to the other AP when its signal is once again stronger. This happens many times per hour. The Dell exhibited the same issue until we made the roaming less agressive.

Has anybody had this issue and have you been able to find a work-around for the Mac? Dell tackles the problem head-on, by letting the end-user decide how aggressive the roaming tendency of the card should be, but I can't find any setting, through the GUI or the command line, or third party app that will let me tell my Mac's AirPort how aggressive I want it to be. I want to tell it, "associate to an AP, then stay on it!"

Please help! Thanks in advance.

Message was edited by: myapplesrock; changed "mac" to "mac-address" for clarity.