Enabling Connectivity Checking in NetworkManager

[Martin Pitt]

Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre [2012-07-10 14:41 -0400]:
> I'd like to enable connectivity checking in NetworkManager. We'd use
> http://start.ubuntu.com/connectivity-check.html, running the check
> every 5 minutes starting from the connection being established.
> start.ubuntu.com has already been in use for a while to verify
> connectivity from the installer, IIRC.

That seems rather overzealous to me. Why does it need to re-check so
often, even after it knows that it is connected to the "real" world
out there? It could stop polling until the connection state changes
then. Several million users pinging the same site every 5 minutes has
both privacy issues as well as significantly increasing the traffic to
start.u.c. as well.

At the same time, 5 minutes is much too long when you use it for some
desktop application. After registering in the portal etc. you do not
want to twiddle your thumbs for 5 minutes until your application is
finally convinced that it can go on using the interweb now.

It seems to me that this check would be more appropriate as a D-BUS
method. It sure needs to be handled async by the application and can
take a few seconds, but it avoids the 5 minute delay, the constant
hammering as well as the user count issues?

Thanks,

Martin
-- 
Martin Pitt                        | http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com)  | Debian Developer  (www.debian.org)