Re: autoip config option?

[Tim Niemueller <tim niemueller de>]

Ben Roberts wrote:
> Is there a case for a configuration option to disable autoip? It
> drives me absolutely nuts ...

Maybe we could have this as a "hidden" GConf key, if we don't want to
expose the in the UI.

> I understand that this enables a minimal network to be set up
> automatically in the case when there is no DHCP server present, but
> this is *surely* a relatively rare use case. In the majority of

I do not agree. I'm familiar with that topic since I did some research
on this recently. It will get more and more important if users start
trying to setup an ad-hoc network on-the-go to copy files and the like.
Last weekend I had to install a new laptop. I had to copy some files
over to the Windoze-part. But instead of having to setup an IP subnet I
just waited half a minute and then I was set with an AutoIP
configuration and could start copying files. If mDNS would be in place I
would not even have to lookup what IP that actually was but could just
the hostnames on the local-link. But that's another story.

> I particularly query why autoip is used on wireless connections, I'm
> not even sure Windows does this by default...? The problem is that in

Windows does since Win98. MacOS does. NM does.

> I suppose having a different icon for autoip connections (as Nikolaus
> suggests) would be a start but equally that might increase confusion.

My suggestion would be an "additional" icon displayed like the lock when
a VPN connection is up. Usually I don't tend to give Windoze as an
example, but if you have an AutoIP-configuration setup it shows a yellow
warning sign. A yellow exclamation mark in the lower left corner (or
right if we are sure that AutoIP and VPN do not happen at the same time)
could make this noticable to the user.

Another thing that really bugged me was that by default the lo interface
gets the route set to the local-link addresses on Fedora. You have to
set "NOZEROCONF=yes" in the config file. I'd consider this to be a bug
since you won't get any traffic through on the "real" device...

To summarize:
- Maybe option to turn AutoIP off, maybe a hidden GConf key
- Have a visual indication for AutoIP being used.
- Fix Fedora lo-device handling

	Tim

-- 
    Tim Niemueller <tim niemueller de>      www.niemueller.de
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