Problem with non-broadcasted (private) wireless networks

[Valentine Sinitsyn]

Hi Patrick,

PL> I use my laptop at home and at work. At home, my wireless network SSID
PL> is broadcasted and knetworkmanager works fine. At work however, the
PL> SSID is not broadcasted and knetworkmanager doesn't list it in the
PL> "Wireless Networks" list. I always have to do "Connect To Other
PL> Wireless Network..." and re-enter the SSID and key.

PL> However, if I do "Options > Show Networks...", I see the network
PL> definition there, there's just no way to access it. I can't get it to
PL> show up in the "Wireless Networks" list so that I can activate it.

PL> Any ideas?
It's not a bug, it's a feature :)

The list of the networks you see in the context menu is composed by
NetworkManager (NM) daemon itself. When starting, KNM (or nm-applet if you
are using Gnome) sends to NM daemon properties of the every network it
knows (including hidden networks). All known networks are also shown
in "Show networks" window. After receiving "known" networks from KNM,
NM daemon looks which ones are present in the current environment and
reports their names back to KNM. Since it can't see hidden network,
it thinks it's not here so it's not shown in the context menu.

I guess NM has some facilities to discover hidden networks, so this
may be NM bug.

Regards,
Valentine