Re: NM scanning policy

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 10:19 -0400, Bill Moss wrote:
> Proposed change to NM scanning policy.
> 
> Context menu scan item: three states -- On, Auto, Off
> 
> On: NM's current policy which is to always scan but adjust the time 
> between scans.
> 
> Auto (default): When a wired connection has been established, stop 
> scanning (also consider powering down radio). As soon as a wired 
> connection is not available, begin scanning. After a wireless connection 
> has been made, stop scanning but start again if the signal strength 
> falls below a threshold.
> 
> Off: Do not scan or stop all wireless devices and power down radios.
> 
> Justification: Scanning powers up the radio.  When operationg on battery 
> and connected by wire, scanning wastes power. Scans that take a long 
> time can be disruptive.

I think this is a good idea and I'll do it, if nobody submits a patch
for it first.  I'm thinking of adding a menu to the applet's right-click
menu called "Wireless Scanning", which would have the items On, Auto,
Off.  This would be a preference stored in GConf and would persist
across reboots and logins.  The Wireless Scanning submenu would replace
the existing "Pause Wireless Scanning" item.

Unfortunately at the moment, I'm not sure we can power down the card, NM
kind of assumes that devices are always going to be up.  But we can
certainly do that a bit later.

Dan