Wireless in 9.10

[Reinhold Rumberger]

On Sunday 06 December 2009, Nigel Ridley wrote:
> I've tried all the options:- KNetWorkManager;
>  Network-Manager-Gnome and Wicd. All of them work for a while then
>  start making problems.

I have next to no experience with any of these, and therefore can't 
offer any advice specific to these apps.

> This is on a Dell Vostro with several users.
> My own Dell Inspiron 1525 has KNetWorkManager and hasn't caused
>  any problems at all.
> 
> The main problem on the multi-user laptop is when someone
>  "switches users" to log in. Only Wicd consistently allows all
>  users to choose from the visible routers. But this weekend Wicd
>  abruptly gave a message that no wireless routers were visible. I
>  tried rebooting a couple of times and ended up reinstalling
>  KNetWorkManager -- which only most times works properly......

If switching users is the cause of the problem, why don't you just 
use /etc/network/interfaces? If the laptop tends to stay within the 
same network, this would remove any need to configure anything 
(unless you use a strange setup like my university does).

If the laptop frequently changes networks, that in itself may cause 
some problems if the driver isn't well-written. It might help to 
unload (rmmod) and load (modprobe) it.

> When is Ubuntu going to sort the whole networkmanager chaos out???

:-)
I haven't been able to use NM since I need more than one network 
interface to be active at a time (i.e. both ethernet and wireless). 
Since I've always used /etc/network/interfaces, this has never really 
bothered me...

The Idea behind NM also has the problem that one needs to log in 
before a network connection can be established (unless something 
drastically changed). This is a problem on my Desktop, which I tend 
to start and afterwards use/manage remotely...

  --Reinhold