Re: Auto-connection seems cumbersome when SSID broadcast is turned off.

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Sat, 2008-10-25 at 10:54 -0400, Geoff Buchan wrote:
> Hi all -
> 
> Apologies if this topic has come up before. I tried searching the list
> and didn't see any discussion of it.
> 
> I'm using NetworkManager and the nm-applet v0.6.6 on Ubuntu, and it is
> frequently slow to find my wireless network at home when I resume from
> suspend-to-RAM. Sometimes it finds the network and connects almost
> immediately, but at other times it may take minutes to see the
> network. What's interesting is that if I manually click "Connect to
> Other Wireless Network" and retype my encryption key, it does find the
> network right away. But if I simply wait, or click on the applet to
> prod a network scan, it often takes quite a while to connect, or I get
> tired of waiting, so I manually type in the connection information.

This is usually indicative of driver bugs, but not always.  If the
driver is reasonably up-to-date (and supports scan capabilities) it
should be able to be found.

The other possibility is that the NM behavior that recognizes cached
BSSIDs is broken.  That would be the first place I would look.  When
it's hidden, does your AP show up in the scan results, only without an
SSID?  If that's the case, then it may be an NM bug.  If it does not
show up in repeated scan results at all (even with a blank SSID) then
it's a driver bug most likely.

If it does show up, then it could be that NM's matching code is broken.
Could you turn off NetworkManager and upon resume, do a few 'iwlist
wlan0 scan' commands separated by 15 seconds each or so?  Look in the
results for your AP.  Let me know if it does or doesn't show up.  Also,
what wireless hardware and what wireless driver?

Dan

> With an older laptop running Slackware (but not NetworkManager), I
> simply wrote a shell script to try to connect to my home network on
> resume, but that seems a crude hack on this newer box. If I enable
> SSID broadcast on my router, it connects promptly, but I like wearing
> my tin foil hat, and it seems there should be a more elegant solution.
> 
> The nm-applet could automatically try the most recently used
> connection first (and perhaps cycle through other connections in least
> recently used order), but then you would have some timeout after which
> you'd give up and try the next one. Alternatively, I could add a
> "connect" button to the properties of the "Edit Wireless Networks"
> window, which would try to connect with those settings, irrespective
> of whether it currently "sees" that network or not. Assuming that is
> the equivalent of manually entering the SSID and encryption key, that
> would solve the issue I'm seeing.
> 
> Am I missing some other already present configuration option that
> would accomplish this? Is there some design reason why either of the
> two suggestions I made would be inappropriate? If not, I'll try hack
> up a patch to get one of them working.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Geoff Buchan
> 
> 
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