GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 737356
[RFE] select WiFi connections for autoconnect based on signal strengh (autoconnect-strategy)
Last modified: 2020-11-12 14:30:44 UTC
There is a long requested feature to provide more flexibility for selecting the ~best~ connection for autoconnect. For a long time, NM prefers the connection that was connected last (ie. sorting by connected-timestamp). Especially for WiFi, there might be several (known) networks in range. When they are are autoconnect=yes, so which one to pick? bug 580018 will add a new connection.autoconnect-priority value, that allows the user *always* to prefer a connection over another. Basically, it partitions all connections into different priority groups. But still, within one priority group, NM still has to pick one out of several connections. And it continues to pick it based on connected-timestamp. There is a feature request, to choose the connection based on the best WiFi signal strength. autoconnect-priority is not a solution for that, because we need a different automatism then connected-timestamp. How about this as implementation: Clearly, connected-timestamp is useful for many cases. It should stay the default. Lets add a connection property [connection] autoconnect-strategy=default|signal-strength When choosing the best candidate, we sort the candidates and select the first one. Sorting effectively means "comparing two candidates". If both candidates have autoconnect-strategy=default, we do the current connected-timestamp comparison. If one of the candidates has autoconnect-strategy=default, we still sort by timestamp. IOW, "default" wins over "signal-strength". If both candidates have "autoconnect-strategy=signal-strength", we would compare the candidates based on WiFi signal strength. In case of equality, fallback to "default". Specifying autoconnect-strategy=signal-strength on a non-WiFi connection currently has no effect, and we fallback to "default".
Great feature, I really hope it will be implemented! :)
Possible enhancement: Connections have: [connection] autoconnect-strategy=default|timestamp|signal-strength and NetworkManager has a systemwide configuration option: [main] autoconnect-strategy=timestamp|signal-strength If a connection is configured as "default", NM would choose the globally configured fallback. That way, users who always want to use the signal-strength strategy can flip only the system-wide switch.
Dear all, This would be a great enhancement! Is this feature currently being worked on? Regards, Robert
(In reply to Robert Orzanna from comment #3) > Dear all, > > This would be a great enhancement! Is this feature currently being worked on? AFAIK, nobody is working on it. Somebody is welcome to pickup this task (as always).
Since we have autoconnect priority now, we might as well just switch over to signal strength for WiFi for 1.2. If that's not the correct mechanism then the user can prioritize their WiFi APs, just like they can do on other OSs like Mac OS X and Windows. The pathological case is where there "Workplace" and when you're at work, you always want to connect to "Workplace". But Starbucks is right downstairs, and at your desk it's stronger than Workplace, and sometimes when you're not at work you do use Starbucks. Autoconnect priority can easily fix that. (except there's no UI for autoconnect priority right now, of course)
bugzilla.gnome.org is being shut down in favor of a GitLab instance. We are closing all old bug reports and feature requests in GNOME Bugzilla which have not seen updates for a long time. If you still use NetworkManager and if you still see this bug / want this feature in a recent and supported version of NetworkManager, then please feel free to report it at https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/-/issues/ Thank you for creating this report and we are sorry it could not be implemented (workforce and time is unfortunately limited).