Feature request : choose wifi connection by priority, rather than last use

[bluestorm <bluestorm dylc gmail com>]

Hi,

First of all, apologies if this is not the right place to make feature requests. I looked for an issue or bug tracker, but couldn't find anything besides distro-specific places.

I would like to be able to give certain networks "higher priority", so that, when they are available, they are selected, regardless of whether an available network was used last.

Here is my example : I use three different wifi networks :
- Home, at my home, which is good and fast
- Work, at work, the same
- Free, which is free, and available everywhere (including cafes, random places, *and* home and work)

I move around, and sometimes use the Free network. When I come back home, the Free network is still available and was used last, so NM chooses it. I don't want that. I want to be able to say that, when Home is available, I want it to be selected rather than Free.

The exact same feature request was made on the Ubuntu bug tracker a few years ago : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/366780 , and three different users have expressed the need for it.

A few remarks :

- Giving an absolute priority (as an integer) would be fine, but maybe a bit complex for the user; I would be ok with having only two priority levels, such as usual networks and "favorite" networks. This is not an issue because the Network I want to give high priority are localized, so will not overlap (Home and Work are never available at the same time). If two favorite network were to overlap, I would probably be ok with the "last used" policy. Different users may have different needs, though.

More generally, I don't think priority-ordering should supplant or replace last-use ordering, but rather that we should order *first* by priority, then (inside the same priority class) by last use.

- It seems NM reasons about networks mostly by ESSID name. That's what I want in some cases (eg. Free is a network supported by lots of different access points), but in some cases I would prefer to select them by AP; eg. when I say "Home" I mean my Home network, with a fixed AP, and would not like another network named "Home" in a different place to be prioritized as well, even if it would not be such a nuisance (I would usually not be able to connect them anyway).


Thanks for reading my request.