Re: Hidden SSID Behavior

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 23:06 -0400, A S wrote:
> I was wondering if a "saved hotspots" setting will be implemented in
> the future. That way, connecting to any hidden SSID will be easy.
> Furthermore, what is technical feasibility of this? I know that my
> routers mac address was stored because i can see it in gconf-editor.
> Is it possible for network manager to connect to a router based on mac
> address? 

I think in a reply to another post, I noted that if the card returns the
AP's BSSID in the scan result list, then NM should auto-connect to that
AP.  If the card doesn't return the BSSID of the non-broadcasting card,
then either (a) the AP isn't sending out _any_ beacon packets and isn't
just hiding the SSID, or (b) the driver needs to get fixed to return the
AP in the scan list even though there is no ESSID found in the beacon
packet.

The alternative is to implement ssid-specific scans, but that gets
expensive for all the non-broadcasting APs people just might have saved.
Each scan takes a bit of time and if your saved AP list keeps growing
gradually, at some point NM would take seconds to scan through all of
them.  Bad experience.  I'd prefer to figure out if the driver is the
issue here.  Do multiple 'iwlist ethX scan' separated by a few seconds
show the AP's BSSID at all?

Dan

> Thanks!
> 
> On 4/5/06, Russell Harrison <rtlm10 gmail com> wrote:
>         I was wondering the same thing.  Reading on the NM page I had
>         the impression that you should see a "hidden" network in your
>         list once you'd connected to it once.  Or better yet it would
>         attempt to connect on its own...
>         
>         
>         On 4/3/06, A S <noeyez gmail com> wrote:
>         
>         Hello everyone,
>         First off, I want to thank all the developers who are working
>         on this much needed project. Its really awesome! I've been
>         using it for awhile now on Ubuntu Breezy and recently i
>         upgraded to Ubuntu Dapper which includes network manager
>         0.6.1 . 
>         
>         Anyway, at home my wireless network doesn't broadcast the
>         SSID. If i choose to connect to other wireless network and
>         enter the relevant information(SSID, WPA2, PSK) it connects
>         ok. But, when i switch to the wired network or restart the
>         computer then i try to choose my wireless network again, it no
>         longer appears in the available list of networks. I think it
>         has to do with the SSID not being broadcast. I know that all
>         the information to connect to the network is stored in gconf
>         and gnome-keyring-manager but there is no way to select this
>         network. Is this a known issue or is it specific to my
>         computer? 
>         
>         Thanks!
>         NoEyez
>         
>         
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