On Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 2:43 PM, Stuart Ward <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The whole point of Network Manager is that it is the integrated network > access tool. Modems are largely standard. we don't need special software to > access different modems. Perhaps we need a configuration strings for some > modems but I see no point in having a separate tool for modems. > > Equally for GSM modems these are as least as standardised as WiFi cards. So > we should not need a seperate tool to manage them. > > What Network Manager should show is the GSM signal strength as soon as you > plug in a modem, and allow a button to select and establish the connection. > Just like the WiFi selection. > > Am I missing something here?
This is just a code reorganization, the NetworkManager will still be the frontend for everything. There are no UI or work flow changes caused by this. As I've tried to explain multiple times already, the reorganization was done mainly to support other modem backends that are currently more advanced than what NM has. Modems are very much _not_ standardized for anything except the very basic functionality. Your example (signal strength) is a good one: while not connected, NM does not keep the serial device open just to get the signal strength. While connected through modem though, it depends very much on modem hardware how to do it: Some cards have another serial device for monitoring (some use binary format there, some use AT commands with different formats), some have one multiplexed device. So there needs to be different handling for different cards and providing a plugins framework in ModemManager is exactly for this. The big difference between wifi and modems is that wifi scanning takes less than a second, so we can schedule scans in some intervals. For modems though, scanning takes a long time (over 10 seconds, sometimes even close to a minute for cards which support a wide range of frequencies), so NM can not just randomly block the access to modem for such long periods of time. Tambet _______________________________________________ NetworkManager-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list
