GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 359556
Define priorities for different networks
Last modified: 2014-04-30 11:21:20 UTC
"it would be great if there is a way to define an order for the networks to log in. I have several networks in my neighbourhood with different essids and sometimes network-manager is not connecting to my network. So setting a priority which networks to try first would be great." https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/46123
I think this report needs to be a little more complete. The NetworkManager applet allows you to define networks you are interested in. (You do this by connecting to a network.) When multiple networks are available, the ones you have connected to before will be used. Sadly, this list has many problems: * It appears to be accessed in alphabetical order. Thus, the "alphaone" network will always be chosen by default over the "zooanimal" network. There needs to be a way to specify that some networks have priority. * Networks can't easily to removed from the list. For example, I have a wireless network I used to connect to that now only accepts 801.11g clients. Since I have a 802.11b card, I need to remove this network from the list. I can't through the GUI. * Networks that have the same essids need some way to distinguish themselves.
There won't ever be user-defined priorities in NM. NM connects to the last network you've connected to that it can find. When you connect, NM timestamps the network, and it will first connect to the most recent network you have chosen. NM 0.7 also matches security settings, so if you have a WPA-enabled 'linksys' and an open 'linksys' saved it will pick the right one. 0.7 also has a connection editor that will allow for easy removal of networks, but with 0.6.5 you can also use gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /path/to/your/network to remove it. If you dont' want NM connecting to a network, remove it from the network list and dont' manually connect to it again.
Dan, I understand the philosophy (and I approve it most of the time). First of all, thanks for the good work on it. The problem for me is that maybe I have not clear how to use NM to solve my problem. The situation is the following: In my university, there are two networks: one is specific to the university, call it "my_uni", and the other is "eduroam". the second one, eduroam, is available in all the spanish universities (and in some abroad, too), but it has a more restricted connection than "my_uni". So the picture is this: I am connected to "my_uni". I go to this other university and I click to connect "eduroam". Now when I go back to my place, NM will connect to "eduroam" --- an I have no access to printers :-), because they are visible only on the other network. It's a minor nit, I know; I suppose I just have to chose again "my_uni" manually and then never ever select manually "eduroam" again (and NM will change to "eduroam" when "my_uni" is not present, and back automatically to "my_uni" when it pops up again --- correct?)