Where I live many internet providers run free access widely available wifi
routers for their clients. My own router has two access points - my private
one, and an insecure one that only allows internet access after you have
correctly identified yourself on a welcome page. I use that when I am not
at home but then at home I have to explicitly select my home access point.

It is high time network-manager started doing something more intelligent in
those cases. I'd suggest simply preferring secure APs to start with.

I've been reading the sources and here is what I have found.

*src/devices/nm-device-wifi.c:build_hidden_probe_list* is called in order
to list the APs that we might want to connect to.

The above function calls
*src/settings/nm-settings.c:get_best_connections*which reads stored
connections from storage, sorts them using
*src/settings/nm-settings.c:nm_settings_sort_connections* and returns the
top 5.

Here are my conclusions: (they aren't criticisms, I just want to be sure I
have understood correctly.)

* network-manager doesn't ask for a list of available access points, it
just asks the supplicant to connect to one of its preferred networks if
they are available (presumably for performance).
* network-manager will never auto-connect to a stored network that doesn't
get into the top 5 - or does it check the whole list afterwards.
* if several stored APs are found, the first one in the list is chosen even
if it has the weakest signal - or does the supplicant have some say in the
matter?
* the sorting code is in a wifi agnostic context so prioritizing secure
networks would (ideally) need some re-factoring. For example,
*get_best_connections* could return the whole list and let
*build_hidden_probe_list* do the sorting.

Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated.
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