Re: NM suboptimal with weak signal strength, easy fix

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Fri, 2007-06-01 at 01:35 -0700, Saikat Guha wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I encountered the following problem with NM recently. I have a _very_
> weak signal in my hotel room. It'll hover at 15% for a while (and I can
> access the Internet then), then drop to 0% for 10--20 seconds (no
> Internet), then come back again for a few minutes and so on.
> 
> With NM:
> - Within a few seconds of the signal dropping to 0%, NM ifdown's the
> interface and starts rescanning. It finds the network again in 10--20s
> and tries to reaquire a lease. But at 15% SNR, it means some DHCP
> packets get lost ... so the 10--20s WiFi outage turns into a 2min NM
> outage with me clicking force it to retry after 2-3 DHCP failures etc.
> 
> Without NM -- i.e. w/ iwconfig+ifconfig+route:
> I set up the device, interface routes etc. by hand. When SNR drops to 0%
> for 10--20s, I have full packet-loss. 20s later, everything is back
> working. There is no inflation of the network level outage to app level.
> 
> Easy Fix:
> A "pin" button for networks. Kind of like that thumbtack pin icon in
> Tomboy Notes Panel app. Once NM acquires a network, "pin" it, and NM
> won't ifdown it even if SNR drops to 0%. Unpin it, and NM operates like
> normal.

The driver is telling userspace that it has lost association with the
access point.  Future versions of NM will try harder to reconnect before
timing out, but I'm not convinced that "pinning" is the best thing to do
from an interaction perspective.

Dan

> Thoughts?
> 
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