GSoC proposal - Network management for PA

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 26.04.2013 13:45, Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> Hi Jan,
>
> On Thursday, April 25, 2013 08:33:22 Jan Grulich wrote:
>>>> 4) Add support for activities
>>>
>>> Why? What use cases do you have in mind? (I'm not saying it's nonsense,
>>> just that it does not directly pop up in front of my virtual eye what
>>> will happen here.)
>>
>> For example: 1) Home - try to automatically connect to your home wifi
>>                        2) Work - automatically connect to VPN
>>                        3) Travel - turn off wifi and mobile broadband or
>> active mobile broadband connection
>>
>> The fact is, that NetworkManager automatically connects to some
>> available and configured connection so maybe activities support will be
>> useless.
>
> That could be very useful. I can also imagine to have it switched off (also
> bluetooth, and everything), when you're on a flight or train and want to
> conserve battery -- although that should be possible in any activity).

While implementing support for Activities in network management sounds 
like a natural thing to do, I'm not sure if it works so well with the 
way Activities are used in PA. In PA, users are likely to have way more 
activities then just "work" and "home" and also switch between them much 
more often, since Activities on PA are useful as a container for each 
larger task / topic instead of just one per _context_. Though of course 
Activities can be used in both ways in any Plasma Workspace, the way we 
designed Activites in PA leans more toward the former.
However if I often switch Activities, I would not want the network 
config to change each time.

However, there is another PA feature which seems almost forgotten by now 
because nobody worked on it since the end of the basyskom project, but 
which I think could work very well with network management: The 
Recommendations framework, with its plugin for the detection of context.

If the systems detects "Ah, my information suggests that you're 
currently on the train, where there is no WiFi anyway", for example, it 
may recommend switching WiFi off (or maybe even doing it automatically), 
until GPS information suggests that the user has arrived at her office 
or home, where it switches on WiFi again and in the office case 
initiates the VPN connection as well.

We currently have all that nice code for the Recommendations engine 
which continuously collects information, but which is currently not put 
to any real use at all. This would be a good use from my perspective.