[Desktop13.04-Topic] Connectivity checking

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre]

I suggested earlier in the Quantal cycle emabling connectivity
checking by default; the suggestion brought up quite a lot of
interesting discussion which we should bring back at UDS.

There are some clear benefits such as being able to handle captive
portals more gracefully, but there general idea of being able to know
whether an "online" state means having actual Internet access or not
brings some benefits, but introduces issues that we need to be
prepared to tackle, such as how to reasonably know whether the
Internet is reachable, what external servers to use, and how regular
traffic generated from this would affect these servers.

What needs to be done for connectivity checking to be working properly
and efficiently for everyone?
How can we make sure privacy and other concerns are taken into account?
How can we use connectivity checking to improve the user experience on Ubuntu?
Where does connectivity checking tie in to Ubuntu on different form factors?
Where could this fail horribly?
How can we best test such a feature?


Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre <mathieu-tl at ubuntu.com>
Freenode: cyphermox, Jabber: mathieu.tl at gmail.com
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