`nmcli connection up` seems to ignore `ap BSSID` option

I've observed this on Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04 and 14.04. I haven't tested other Linux flavors. Below testing was done with network-manager 1.22.10-1ubuntu1.

Per the man page, we should be able to, (with multiple APs visible,) connect to a specific access point with nmcli using existing connection info (i.e. a connection file exists in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections). E.g.:

nmcli c up id BldgWifi ap AB:CD:EF:G1:23:45

Note: I am not looking to restrict my connections to a single BSSID, I am looking to tell NM to go ahead and jump to a BSSID of my choice (typically because better signal strength).

However, this doesn't work. As an example of what I'm seeing in the terminal:

user@somemachine:~$ iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"BldgWifi"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:5.18 GHz  Access Point: 12:9F:C2:FF:8C:AE
          Bit Rate=400 Mb/s   Tx-Power=22 dBm
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Link Quality=54/70  Signal level=-56 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:120   Missed beacon:0

user@somemachine:~$ nmcli d wifi | grep BldgWifi | head
        12:9F:C2:FF:85:1B  BldgWifi                Infra  9     260 Mbit/s  89      ▂▄▆█  WPA2
        12:9F:C2:FF:7B:13  BldgWifi                Infra  1     260 Mbit/s  80      ▂▄▆_  WPA2
        12:9F:C2:FF:7B:12  BldgWifi                Infra  161   540 Mbit/s  74      ▂▄▆_  WPA2
        12:9F:C2:FF:8D:B6  BldgWifi                Infra  48    540 Mbit/s  70      ▂▄▆_  WPA2
        12:9F:C2:FF:85:9F  BldgWifi                Infra  1     260 Mbit/s  69      ▂▄▆_  WPA2
        12:9F:C2:FF:85:9E  BldgWifi                Infra  149   540 Mbit/s  69      ▂▄▆_  WPA2
        12:9F:C2:FF:8D:B7  BldgWifi                Infra  11    260 Mbit/s  67      ▂▄▆_  WPA2
        12:9F:C2:FF:86:E6  BldgWifi                Infra  36    540 Mbit/s  65      ▂▄▆_  WPA2
*       12:9F:C2:FF:8C:AE  BldgWifi                Infra  36    540 Mbit/s  65      ▂▄▆_  WPA2
        12:9F:C2:FF:85:1A  BldgWifi                Infra  52    540 Mbit/s  54      ▂▄__  WPA2

user@somemachine:~$ nmcli c up id BldgWifi ap 12:9F:C2:FF:86:E6
Connection successfully activated (D-Bus active path: /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/ActiveConnection/6)

user@somemachine:~$ iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"BldgWifi"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:5.18 GHz  Access Point: 12:9F:C2:FF:8C:AE
          Bit Rate=400 Mb/s   Tx-Power=22 dBm
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=54/70  Signal level=-56 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:14   Missed beacon:0

To summarize the above:

• Initially connected to 12:9F:C2:FF:8C:AE
• Listed APs for the same SSID
• Attempted to connect to different AP 12:9F:C2:FF:86:E6
• Connection "succeeded"
• But connected AP is unchanged (most of the time; sometimes I can get it to change once, typically after restarting network-manager ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

I went ahead and turned on DEBUG level logging, and captured the journalctl output for a brief interval (testing with Ubuntu 20.04 in this case). The only reference to the BSSID was the following DEBUG line:

Jun 07 09:51:37 freight100-0069 NetworkManager[3533923]: <debug> [1591548697.9353] device[cd7c5e37804a1014] (wlan0): roamed from BSSID 12:9F:C2:FF:86:E6 ("BldgWifi") to (none) ((none))

I've attached this DEBUG snippet, as well. (note, it was done for an attempt to connect to a third AP, so differs from the BSSIDs above)

As an attempted workaround, I also tried using nmcli d wifi connect 12:9F:C2:FF:86:E6, which exhibits the same behavior.log_change