Re: NetworkManager doesn't show all APs

[Xamindar <junkxamindar gmail com>]

Dan Williams wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-01-15 at 12:05 -0800, Xamindar wrote:
>   
> > I don't know if this is a "feature" or not but NetworkManager never 
> > shows multiple APs of the same name for me.  There should be 3 in range 
> > where I am but it only shows one.  I often have problems connecting to 
> > this network under linux probably because it is trying to associate to 
> > one of the ones barely in range. 
> >
> > I also posted about it not showing multiple linksys networks a while 
> > back but didn't get much response about it.  Is this planned to be fixed 
> > or is it how it is going to stay?
> >     
>
> Yes, we'll separate out networks based on things like:
>
> 1) Mode: adhoc vs infrastructure
> 2) Band: a vs. b/g
> 3) Encryption (maybe): WEP vs none vs WPA
>   
Seperating by whether an AP has encryption or not would be very nice as 
at the moment if there is an access point with encryption and another 
without but both have the same essid, NetworkManager only shows the 
encrypted one with no option to connect to the non-encrypted one.  Very 
annoying.
> But we're still going to aggregate SSIDs that have the same
> characteristics in the menu.  So if you have a few networks around that
> all have the SSID 'linksys', and they are all unencrypted, they will be
> coalesced into one item in the menu. 
Aww that's too bad.  My Zaurus connects in a similar way by associating 
to whatever ap it happens to randomly choose with the essid I specify 
(it doesn't scan for networks or show a list).  I had learned to just 
give up on connecting in certain areas (ie appartment complex, or middle 
of San Francisco).  Once I got a laptop with whatever wireless tools are 
in Windows, dell I guess, I saw how useful showing every AP could be.  
No more connecting and praying for it to connect successfully.  Is there 
no changing your mind?
>  We may add the ability to only
> associate with a set of BSSIDs in 0.7 with the new config stuff, but
> that certainly won't be default and you'll have to manually configure
> it.
>
> At least in the gnome applet, we're not going to break out every BSSID
> and show each one item by item in the menu, that's just madness.
>   
Is there a different applet to use?  Only the kde and gnome one or are 
there others?
> The other thing I'd like to do for 0.7 if there's time is to allow full
> access to every network from the dbus API and rely on the client-side
> GUI applets to coalesce networks appropriately.
>   
That sounds very useful.
> Cheers,
> Dan
>
>
>   
Thanks for all your work on this application.  Without it networking on 
Linux would be a lot more tedious.