Mysteries of NM

[Timothy Murphy <gayleard eircom net>]

I'm running NetworkManager on my Thinkpad T60
(Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG controller, iwl3945 driver)
and it works fine under Fedora/KDE,
but I find the user interface almost completely unintelligible.

If I left click on the NM icon in the panel
a window comes up with WLAN Interface on the left,
and Connections on the right.
(Rather annoyingly, there is no X at the top right-hand corner
to close the window, one has to click again on the icon.)
A number of APs (4) are listed on the right, including the one I am using.

On the left, the Traffic box shows a number of moving spikes,
distributed unevenly but approximately one every 10 seconds.
I take it these are beacons of some kind from the APs?

If I click on the Manage Connections button at the bottom of the window
and then choose Wireless, my present connection is listed,
but it says Last Used: Never. which I find puzzling.

If I highlight this entry, and click on Scan,
I see rather a nice map showing the APs previously listed,
presumably showing the stronger signals nearer to the centre.
(What, if anything, does the location around the circle mean?)

I find it odd that this graphic only appears
after I have chosen a specific connection;
I would have thought it would be more logical
to offer it when the APs were listed earlier.

Are others puzzled by the NM interface,
or am I being obtuse?


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland