Re: howto disable default multiple device activation?

["Tambet Ingo" <tambet gmail com>]

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 6:42 PM, Nikolaus Filus <nfilus gmx net> wrote:
> Tony Espy wrote:
>> What about 3g?  Does it also stay connected when an Ethernet cable is
>> plugged in?  If so, couldn't that have financial implications to the
>> end-user?

Yes, 3g is handled the same way. Modems are different though, they are
not activated automatically, so if you remember to activate it when
you need it, you should remember to deactivate it as well. Plus,
(AFAIK) there's no financial implications when you have the modem
activated but not used for any traffic, so in case of active 3g device
and ethernet device, all the traffic goes through ethernet device
(unless it's specifically to the IP network of your modem).

> I'm responsible for a little office network and I never saw a use case for
> connection sharing in office environments. This is also one of those things I
> disallow for all users. In my eyes only some end users need this for their home
> networks in rare cases.

If you so strongly feel it's bad, then it's your responsibility to
pre-configure your office laptops (machines with wifi devices) to have
a connection profile for your local wifi network with property
"connect automatically" not set.

> Besides that I always hated the default windows behaviour of acquiring IP
> adresses on all interfaces, what means everyone gets 1 ethernet and 1 wireless
> address. I don't want to have this on linux.

Do you have any reasons to hate it, other than "I have a gut feeling
that this is bad"? The fastest device is always used for new TCP
connections, so it's not like it'll slow anything down.

Here's a specific example why it's good: I'm connected through my wifi
device only and have a bunch of open TCP connections (ssh, irc, ...).
Then I need to transfer a large file from the local network. I plug in
the cable (to make it faster) and start the transfer. When it's done
(or whenever I feel like it), I unplug the cable. With 0.6 behavior,
I'd need to start my processes 3 times. My point is, there's simply no
reason to deactivate the previously active device, it's used until
it's necessary and then just stays there until it's needed again.

Tambet