Re: Connecting to weak signal wifi, wireless network authentication required message

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre <mathieu tl gmail com>]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 12:36 AM, Julian H <moebuspcgold gmail com> wrote:
[...]
> 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.

Which I think should be fine for most cases. If you're using a shared
account for people who should not know the password (or if it's an
available to all users connection that other accounts want to use),
then I'd instead make sure NM supports securing the relevant passwords
with policykit, which will require setting the connection as
"Available to all users", but created from an "administrator" or other
account which is not available for everyone to access.

[...]

> 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'.
>

I don't think this is a good idea. It hides potential other issues
with drivers, wpasupplicant, or whatever. I think in most cases where
you lose the connection and retry fails, it's reasonable to ask for
the password again.

Moreover, notification pop-ups are easy to miss. Where to check and
modify the password is also not necessarily as discoverable as you
expect it to be.

> 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'.

I also don't think it's as easy to know whether the password for the
connection has changed on the AP side. That's likely the reason why
it's currently handled as it is.

Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre <mathieu tl gmail com>
Freenode: cyphermox, Jabber: mathieu tl gmail com
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