Re: has anyone had a chance to look at my nm-applet patch?

["Darren Albers" <dalbers gmail com>]

On 10/28/07, Katelin Ganzer <katelin ganzer gmail com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was just curious if any of the developers have had a chance to look
> over my patch for nm-applet yet.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Katie
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I am not a dev but my first thought was "Great idea" but then I
realized that it is probably way too much info for the user.   In
/most/ cases the user will see a large number of AP's and will pick
the one with the best signal and this is what NM does now
automatically.  I think it only confuses the issue for the user to see
all the different channels.

I can see three situations were you have multiple AP's broadcasting
the same SSID:
1) Corporate environments:  In this case NM is going to connect to the
one with the best signal strength automatically with no user
intervention required so no need for it here.
2) Neighborhoods where everyone has an AP broadcasting out Linksys.
The strongest AP /should/  be the users in most cases but the user
really should rename that SSID!
3) Someone is in an airport, coffee shop, cafe etc.. and has setup a
rogue AP with the same SSID to sniff someones sessions.   This patch
won't help here since the user won't know which is the legit AP anyway
(This is why I ALWAYS use VPN when I am on a public hotspot).

So the only situation I can see it solving is #2 but that seems pretty
narrow.  Is there another use that I am missing?

Maybe it would be better to make this an option that can be enabled by
changing a gconf value for advanced users who want to see this
information but otherwise leave it disabled?  Out of curiosity how do
other OS's deal with this?

I love the idea of the patch and I always like seeing more information
so if I had an option I would personally enable this feature but I
don't think it should be the default.