Re: Roaming & VPN

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Sat, 2008-10-18 at 08:59 +0200, Martin Hochreiter wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I am using the network manager applet 0.7.0 from the ubuntu intrepid 
> repository.
> I was very impressed of the advancements of 0.7.0 and want to ask 2 
> questions:
> 
> VPN:
> I had in my profile a VPN network connection created with 0.6.
> This connection was working in 0.7.0 until 2 days ago (automatic update 
> to 0.7~~svn200810)
> Now I get "The vpn service was invalid" immediately after clicking on 
> the vpn entry
> (additionally I can't create a new connection - the button is disabled)
> - what's wrong here?

What type of VPN connection?  Once we know that, there are a few things
to try.

> Roaming:
> I have many access points in my company, running with the same ssid and 
> network setups
> on different channels for roaming.
> When I use windows or apple mac, the network managing "daemons" (if you 
> can call that so in windows)
> are switching without any delay to the strongest signal.
> With the network-manager 0.7 I have to disable the wlan and rejoin the 
> wlan again to switch to the
> strongest access point (and that is often only possible after restart of 
> the machine).
> Can somebody give me a hint here please?

Roaming is highly driver dependent at this point, though the supplicant
does control some aspects of roaming.  The supplicant doesn't terminate
the connection and roam just because there's a better AP, though it
could be a bit smarter here.

Some drivers roam whenever they want, but that's mainly the older
fullmac devices like airo and orinoco.  Yours (3945) uses mac80211,
where roaming will be controlled by the supplicant.  Thus, the fixes
should likely be there since NM leaves roaming up to the driver and
supplicant.

Dan