Use wpa_cli as NetworkManager replacement

[Curtis Larsen]

Dan Williams wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-05-12 at 01:03 -0600, Curtis Larsen wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am not a developer, just a user that has several reasons to replace
>> ubuntu's network manager with something like wpa_supplicant with wpa_cli:
>
> As an NM developer I'm interested in why it doesn't work well for you.
>
>> - It connects faster (In general I would say 2-3x faster than ubuntu NM)
>
> This part is interesting, but recently we've made some improvements here
> if you're carrying the patch that doesn't trigger a rescan if a scan has
> been done in the last 5 seconds.

Where do I get this patch?  I am willing to try.  I am using ubuntu 
10.0.4 LTS.

>> - It lets me specify 5Ghz band = double throughput at work.
>
> Hmm; I actually wasn't aware that we could do this in the supplicant yet
> (I've been waiting for it actually) and so if it's now there, I'd love
> to add this capability to NetworkManager.

Please add it.  It works great for me.  Jounie recently added it to 
wpa_supplicant.  I think I am using version 0.7.1. or 0.7.2? with this 
command:

freq_list=5180 5200 5220 5240 5260 5280 5300 5320 5745 5765 5785 5805 5825

I have done detailed throughput testing and in my environment at work 
this gives me consistently 2x better throughput besides allowing me to 
troubleshoot either a 2.4ghz or 5ghz issue at my choosing.

>> - It gives me text/debug output for troubleshooting.
>
> Have you tried --log-level=debug in recent versions of NM (which Ubuntu
> may not ship yet unfortunately)?  What kind of output are you looking
> for here?  There's also this:

No ...haven't tried, and won't bother until it allows forcing 5Ghz.  If 
you do add this feature to NM I would love to know when it is available.

Win Vista, and Win7 do this now on a per SSID basis.  Mac OS still lacks 
this ability.

> http://live.gnome.org/NetworkManager/Debugging
>
> especially the section on "Debugging WiFi Connections".

Very nice.  Thanks for the info.

Thanks,

Curtis