Re: EAP-FAST support and hidden SSIDs

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Fri, 2006-03-24 at 13:44 +0100, Jan wrote:
> well this linksys access points don't have hidden essid if i remember
> correctly. i just want to get around having to type "wireless campus
> network..." every time i'm in the range of a new access point of the
> hidden university wireless lan. what nm should is the following:
> 
> ap: broadcast: "hidden essid"
> nm: hey there is a new access point i dont't know yet, lets try essid
> "foo"
> ap: access denied!
> nm: lets try essid foo2
> ap: access granted ;)

The problem is that trying each connect can take up to 45 seconds, now
that we've increased the DHCP timeout.  So right there, that's a minute
and a half (potentially).  And you're not even connected yet.  That's a
pretty crappy user experience.  We have to walk a line between making
stuff automatic, and not doing stupid things that users don't expect, or
that don't work the way people expect them to.  Often it's better to
have a clearly presented failure, than to keep attempting to do odd
things.

For large installations like this, it's pretty much expected that a
sysadmin will know all the AP BSSIDs, and preload them onto your
computer, or at least give you a GConf xml file which you can import.

Dan