[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Re: WiFi connection manager issues (was: I have a new car...)

[From: Erik Walthinsen]

Victor Toni wrote:
> I wish my old radio back, it had a default station set up and it just 
> worked; at least most of the time, more often than the new one.

I find the new behavior a significant improvement over the old, though there 
are still some basic enhancements I could wish for.

Specifically, the biggest annoyance with the old code was that if I went 
anywhere where the *single* default AP wasn't, it would time out and fail to 
connect, then force me to manually select the already-configured AP that's 
it can hear.  The current behavior is far superior in that it doesn't have 
to ask me to connect to the [configured] one that it *can* hear.

Now, the problem is that at my house I have two APs: one for my own use 
that's WEP'd, and one for the neighbor's use (legally) that isn't.  I've 
found that the 770 can select one of these seemingly at random.  The problem 
is that if it connects to the open AP, I'm on the wrong subnet and behind 
firewall rules I don't usually want.  That's reserved for when I'm half a 
block away and can't hear my private AP.

What is needed is the simple ability to order APs by priority of use.  If 
more than one AP is available at any given moment, select the one with the 
highest priority.

A useful additional feature would be another entry in the connection menu, 
or even just a simple double-click of the icon, that acts just like the 
application-triggered connection mode: select the best available connection 
and just get it over with, without asking the user to confirm and/or select 
which connection.  Keep the "connect..." entry for times when you want to 
select one in particular.

Another one would be the ability to lock a connection on until manually 
disconnected, either in a connection profile or only for the current 
session.  Having the connection drop and be forced to wait for a reconnect 
when the app that triggered the connection shuts down can get rather 
annoying.  The ability to leave it running even when the cover is closed is 
really nice (esp for e.g. ssh), but I still find myself in situations where 
the connection gets dropped automatically when I don't want it to.

TTYL,
     Omega
     aka Erik Walthinsen
     omega at vcolo.com