Connecting to weak signal wifi, wireless network authentication required message

[Julian H <moebuspcgold gmail com>]

I use NetworkManager and nmapplet to connect to a wep enable wifi connection.  Occasionally the signal is subject to interference and the connection drops.  NetworkManager attempts to reconnect and if successful, all is fine.  However on occasions when NetworkManager cannot connect, nmapplet displays a screen titled "Wireless Network Authentication Required" asking to re-enter the network key which is present but masked.

This feature causes my wifi network connection to hold its operation indefinitely until human intervention is reoccurs, network access is halted until the user clicks connect.
This feature also exposes the wireless key for the user to see.

- Connect automatically is checked for the network connection in question.
- Available to all users is unchecked for the network connection in question.

What I would like to do to address this issue is to make NetworkManager continuously retry connecting the favoured wireless connection, with a notification pop-up 'retrying ESSID/check password'.

The entry box for entering a wireless password should only pop up if NetworkManager has never connected to BSSID before, it is has previously connected and the password has since changed, the previously mentioned notification pop-up should signal the user to manually change the key in 'Edit Connection'.

Is there any way I can easily edit the source / d-bus script to enable this?  I have had a look to the mailing lists and google, many people are experiencing similar faults but their method of addressing it is to make a script to killall NetworkManager and restart  the service, which is rather crude.

Im using:
Ubuntu 10.10 / 2.6.35-27-generic
nmApplet 0.8.1.998 (ppa version makes no difference to the situatuion)
NetworkManager 0.8.1 (ppa version makes no difference to the situatuion)