Written by Kosimo the 10 May 08 at 13:16.
Related project: Network Manager.
Status: Not an idea
Rationale
When a new wireless network is activated, the only way to see it in network manager is waiting 'till the system find it... Why not adding a simple (refresh) button to make a new search and find all Wireless Networks?
Um, either I don't understand you or you haven't tried to click on the applet. A list of found networks pops up and you can select the one you want. And if that doesn't work, there's the button "Connect to new wireless network".
Sidney:
Choosing "Connect to new wireless network" forces you to write the wireless name, and no, it doesn't make a new search for all available networks.
What I mean is very very simple:
A button: (Search, or refresh) To update the list of available wireless network.
Hello, I have the same problem, when I'm connected to a wireless network, I am not looking for new networks around.Only I can give to the second mouse button on the wireless icon and connect and disconnect again ..
Thank you.
I agree. The Network Manager needs a Refresh button... or remove the GNOME Network Manager and replace it with something like Wicd - it works way better than the default in Ubuntu!
I think that refreshing itself more often would make awake the power saving more times and consuming more energy... You don't really need that feature. But, when trying to connect to some specific network you really need a refresh, and is here where the magic Button REFRESH needs to be there!
Any wireless manager should be able to do this. I am surprised that this capability isn't already there.
It wouldn't be so bad if I could see a list of wireless networks I have configured but aren't currently detected, so I can try selecting them anyway. But that isn't possible either, although it is a (slightly) less mind-boggling design decision.
Yeah, this is a frequent problem when you return from a suspend, and come up with a blank list of wireless networks when there are lots around that the system just hasn't scanned for.
Actually, I think that all of this would be solved by network manager forcing a rescan when you click on the wireless icon, if it hasn't already scanned within a certain time period, (say, a minute or so).
Then, you would pretty much never get an empty list of networks, and you'd be able to manually force a rescan for networks just by clicking the icon, without incurring any more overhead by having network manager auto-rescan any more frequently than it currently does.
I agree with the need for a rescan or refresh button. I use WiFi on the train, logging in at each station (to sync e-mail) when the train stops there. I need to be able to trigger a rescan as the train draws in - if I wait for network manager to just find it, it's too late. (The refresh functionality is available under other OSes).
I think solutions 5 and 6 are ideal, especially 6 as it's confirmed to me something I was fearful about and that was the frequency at which "nm" would keep refreshing and whether that would put load on the system and wireless card, possibly even burning the latter out eventually. But with intervals of up to two minutes thats pretty safe. If it did put a load on the system then solution 2 would be more desirable.
In some regard I still think a refresh button on the drop down would be a good idea as it's often the case that when you scan for the first time your desired network doesn't always get picked up and I think the primary instinct is not to close the menu and re-open (as this is refreshing) but to try and refresh the list to find it. This button could be placed out of the way since it would only be needed sparingly if refreshes we're generally successful. Either that or we place a message in the drop down when clicked on that states "Scanning for wireless networks" then disappears, which shows users that by virtue of opening the wireless networks drop down you are scanning for networks each time. That means no need for a refresh button, just a re-opening of a menu.
#5 is missing the point the same way the entire Gnome project misses the point. Sure, we want everything to work right out of the box, but you shouldn't remove the functionality to fix it if something goes wrong just because "that should never happen".
Ubuntu should patch NM to add a refresh button, or at least adjustable scan intervals and then leave it until the Gnome project gets its act together and actually fixes it.
Unchecking then rechecking "Enable wireless" via right click will refresh the list immediately.
20 seconds is a very long time - maybe necessary on some lame wireless hardware, but most will pick up beacons IMMEDIATELY so won't need a "scan" as such. On every other device and OS, my AP is visible within one second. It is also visible in 1 second if I do "iwlist scan", but can still take forever to get to the NM list.
To respond to "why would you ever not want it to be up to date" - well, what is proposed is that the data is likely to be always stale by up to 20 seconds or 2 minutes for the next several years while Gnome keeps telling us they won't fix it properly. If they can't do better than being out of date by longer than it takes to load and start you-tube, they need a refresh.
cheesehead(Brainstorm admin)
wrote on the 7 Jul 11 at 04:36
Most of the Network-Manager bugs that casued this behavior seems to be ironed out without the need for a 'refresh' button.
If your NM cannot see a network within a few seconds of it's initial broadcast (and you know it really is broadcasting), then please file a bug report.