GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 165933
optional scanning
Last modified: 2005-07-08 02:11:10 UTC
NM constantly scans for AP changes. when connected, this causes the card to disconnect and interrupts data flow, which is more than frustrating for media streaming or internet telephony (ie, skype). it should be possible for the user to prevent NM from scanning. at least for me, my laptop is pretty stationary most of the time (home, office) and does not need to scan constantly since nothing changes anyway.
i second that! if i'm at home i definitly know that there is only one access point! maybe add a configuration option to supply the scan interval. or even better implement some sort of a policy. e.g. when essid="something" is encountered it's not necessary to scan for additional access points and when essid="another" scan interval of Xsec should be used etc.
me too. A configuration option can be "Automatic/Manual scanning" and when Manual scanning is selected, we will have another button in NMI that says "Scan now". And/or when we click on NMI, we perform a scan and then we update the AP list.
Implemented via right-click menu in the applet with "Pause wireless scanning" and "resume wireless scanning". Will that be sufficient? I hesitate to add lots of UI stuff to support optional scanning (like essid-based policy or scan now buttons) because that just bloats up the UI. I could be convinced to put in a GConf key that would specify scanning be on/off by default though :)
Pause/Resume wireless scanning function pretty much serves my needs ;-) but if it doesn't take much convincing, i'd be very much in favor of a gconf key - maybe even an entry to specify the scanning interval? just a thought...
How about making a gconf key and storing in it the right value when we 'Pause/resume the wireless scanning' ? I mean, when I "pause wireless scanning", the gconf value is set to "true" or something, and next time NM starts, it remembers the user's policy. Another question is are we talking about "wireless scanning while not associated" or a general "wireless scanning" behavior ? I would like to have wireless scanning when not associated, and wireless scanning disabled when associated. A gconf key for scan interval would be nice also.
Paul: good idea. I'll do that, but I'm not sure when I'll get it done. (by "that" I mean a persistent scan switch that controls scanning when the card is associated. scanning when not associated won't be affected.)
Should be fixed now.