Re: Wifi network priority

[Sérgio Basto <sergio serjux com>]

On Sáb, 2014-05-03 at 10:57 +0200, John Page wrote: 
> Where I live many internet providers run free access widely available
> wifi routers for their clients. My own router has two access points -
> my private one, and an insecure one that only allows internet access
> after you have correctly identified yourself on a welcome page. I use
> that when I am not at home but then at home I have to explicitly
> select my home access point.
Hi, 
I had the same problem, so I went to "edit connections" and disable
"Automatically connect to this network when available" to free access
connections .

> It is high time network-manager started doing something more
> intelligent in those cases. I'd suggest simply preferring secure APs
> to start with.


> I've been reading the sources and here is what I have found.
>
>
> src/devices/nm-device-wifi.c:build_hidden_probe_list is called in
> order to list the APs that we might want to connect to.
>
>
> The above function
> calls src/settings/nm-settings.c:get_best_connections which reads
> stored connections from storage, sorts them
> using src/settings/nm-settings.c:nm_settings_sort_connections and
> returns the top 5.
>
>
> Here are my conclusions: (they aren't criticisms, I just want to be
> sure I have understood correctly.)
>
>
> * network-manager doesn't ask for a list of available access points,
> it just asks the supplicant to connect to one of its preferred
> networks if they are available (presumably for performance).
> * network-manager will never auto-connect to a stored network that
> doesn't get into the top 5 - or does it check the whole list
> afterwards.
> * if several stored APs are found, the first one in the list is chosen
> even if it has the weakest signal - or does the supplicant have some
> say in the matter?
> * the sorting code is in a wifi agnostic context so prioritizing
> secure networks would (ideally) need some re-factoring. For example,
> get_best_connections could return the whole list and let
> build_hidden_probe_list do the sorting.
>
>
> Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated. 
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-- 
Sérgio M. B.