Reloading Experience--Wireless

[Howard Coles Jr.]

On Wednesday 30 May 2007 06:35:25 pm Derek Broughton wrote:
> Howard Coles Jr. wrote:
> > Thanks indeed.  These kinds of posts should show up more often.  I'll
> > have to investigate the WICD, because I have completely forsaken NM
> > because you can
> > only have one NIC up at a time.  Stupid idea if you ask me.
>
> Not strictly true - though NM will only _control_ one interface at a time.
> It's not so much a "stupid" idea as just not having become mature enough to
> handle more than one.  I've had both my wireless (NM controlled) and wired
> (/etc/network/interfaces controlled) NICs up at once.  That's when I fixed
> things and made sure that NM was controlling both...
> --
> derek

Well, NM will kill, yes, kill, the wired connection if you engage the wireless 
or vice versa.  Its not just indifferent.  So even though you turn on the 
wired or wireless cards in the interfaces file, as soon as you 
click "connect" or "activate" (can't remember which its been too long) it 
kills the other connection.  
I don't buy the "not mature enough" argument.  Network interfaces and their 
configs have been around too long for someone to put out a utility that can't 
handle more than one at a time.  It should, at least, be set up so that it 
doesn't kill the first connection just because you activate a second one, 
(unless you select an option to "turn off" the first NIC on purpose).  The 
only way to have NM working is to let it activate one of them, and then 
manually through ifup turn up the second.  If at any point, (in my testing 
anyway) I activated another NIC the first was purposefully deactivated.  
There's no excuse for that.  There should be an option to turn off all other 
connections or leave other connections active, or have a series of check 
boxes, so that I can click the check boxes of the nics I want NM to try and 
bring up (if I have more than one).  Why should I jump through a thousand 
hoops, when all I have to do is create a /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file, point 
my wireless card to that, and let 'er go?  However, with wicd I can fire up 
both wired and wireless.

If all you ever use is one connection NM would be fine, but if you're trying 
to do something that requires both NICs up at the same time, you're out of 
luck.
  
-- 
See Ya'
Howard Coles Jr.
John 3:16!