RE: [REQ] Adding support for simultaneous wireless networks

[Brent Newland <brent_newland msn com>]

I'm glad someone from Canonical responded, as Ubuntu is my distro of choice.

The reason I don't have access to the access point/router is because the network is locked down to the point of not being able to connect to other devices on the network. I know this is not a standard use case, but you could extend it by imagining someone at Starbucks on the Starbucks wifi wanting to print to their portable printer which only supports wifi. In this case, they would also have to disconnect from the wifi access point and reconnect to the printer. Or imagine a user wanting to connect to two wireless networks at the same time to transfer files.

While these two ARE special cases, the other issue should be a fairly common one - having internet through one connection (whether it's wired, wireless, an aircard, bluetooth tethering, dial-up, etc.) and wanting to connect to a wifi enabled printer. In any of these cases, it becomes nigh impossible th achieve the desired result. And so far I haven't found anything in network-manager that will facilitate this.

And as stated by Dan, it also extends to other special use cases (sharing a network connection with another device, wanting to access a private network at the same time as your internet connection, etc.) Ideally there would be a way to specify a network connection as an internet connection (and enable load-balancing for multiple connections, I suppose) and designating a network connection as a private connection (automatic searching for devices occurs automatically on all private networks, typing in an IANA restricted IP address will check both networks for availability of that address/port and prompt if it's found on more than one network).


----------------------------------------
> Subject: Re: [REQ] Adding support for simultaneous wireless networks
> From: bjoern martensen gmail com
> To: dcbw redhat com
> CC: jerone young canonical com; brent_newland msn com; networkmanager-list gnome org
> Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:58:32 +0100
> 
> ah ok then. however, i think it should be a bit more clear to the user
> what to do. something like a 3 step wizard like bluez-gnome has now for
> setting up new bluetooth devices would be nice.
> 
> for example something like this:
> 
> 1. select the device connected to the internet
> 2. select the device for others to connect to, to use the shared
> connection
> 3. (optional for wifi) select encryption
> 
> and then nm sets up the shared connection on the chosen device.
> just an idea, open for improvements and comments ;)
> 
> greets,
> Björn
> 
> On Mon, 2008-10-27 at 11:47 -0400, Dan Williams wrote:
>> On Mon, 2008-10-27 at 16:37 +0100, Bjoern Martensen wrote:
>>> a friend of mine has a desktop pc with 2 ethernet devices onboard and
>>> uses one to connect to his dsl modem and one to share this pppoe
>>> connection over to his xbox. being able to share a connection not only
>>> wired <-> wifi but also wired <-> wired would be nice in such
>>> situations and it can't be done with the current state.
>> 
>> NM 0.7 allows connection sharing between arbitrary devices.
>> 
>> Dan
>> 
>>> On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 2:01 PM, Jerone Young
>>>  wrote:
>>>> This is not a standard use case. The fact is most consumers would have
>>>> the wireless printer connected to their wifi network. I myself have a
>>>> wireless printer and it connects to my wifi network, where I just access
>>>> it like a standard network printer.
>>>>
>>>> I'm a little confused on exactly why you are connecting to your printer
>>>> via ad-hoc mode, unless you do not have a wifi access point. To which
>>>> once you did get one, you need to connect the printer to the access
>>>> point.
>>>>
>>>> The only common case for this connecting to a printer wirelessly
>>>> directly is via bluetooth, but this is handled by bluez and not
>>>> network-manager. Also devices that do support it, handle this easily.
>>>>
>>>> Supporting something like this actually confuses users. How do you know
>>>> which connection to get to the internet from ? .. it makes little
>>>> since ...
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, 2008-10-27 at 00:53 -0600, Brent Newland wrote:
>>>>> I work at a retail store selling computers, and I can tell you that
>>>>> all the printer manufacturer's seem to be going wireless. Out of the
>>>>> latest selection of HP and Canon printers we carry, nearly all of the
>>>>> consumer level machines have built in wireless.
>>>>>
>>>>> Alot of people expect to be able to connect to the internet (whether
>>>>> it's through a wireless network, a cell phone card, a cable) and also
>>>>> be able to connect to their printer at the same time to print
>>>>> wirelessly, but that's not currently an easy thing to configure.
>>>>>
>>>>> What's even worse is if you want to connect to a wireless network while being connected to a wireless printer in ad-hoc mode. Currently, to do this you would have to use airtun-ng (this is the only program I've found which does this):
>>>>> http://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=airtun-ng&DokuWiki=70b54c7d04564ca6bcee0f8746f3044d#connecting_to_two_access_points
>>>>>
>>>>> That'll let you connect to two wireless networks as long as they are on the same channel.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I think that these would both be excellent features to have (connect to two wireless networks with one card to load balance/access resources on both networks - useful for copying between networks as well - and easily setting up an ad-hoc connection to a printer with another connection as the primary; all via the networkmanager GUI, of course). I'm sure that in the near future there will be a lot more questions like these across the different distros.
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