Docunext

Wow! The Network Manager software package got way better recently!

A little background - Network Manager is an graphical user interface open source network management application which can help users connect in a variety of ways:

• Wired
• Wireless
• Virtual Private Networks
• Mobile Broadband

I'd previously used Network Manager and the nm-applet tool to connect to some open wireless networks, but initially had to manually edit the wpa_supplicant.conf file for WPA secure wireless networks. Eventually I was able to manage WPA networks with nm-applet, but it took some time to get there.

Just recently, nm-applet got an upgrade which in my experience is working really well. I'm using it to connect to a variety of networks, and everything goes super smooth. I'm very excited about the mobile broadband connectivity - what a surprise! I'm connected with it as I type this. You know it: vzw3g rocks! :-)

I'm also very interested in the VPN connectivity. I've previously used such a setup with Mac OS X, but never on GNU/Linux. I've manually configured IPSec on GNU/Linux to connect to a pfSense IPSec machine on the other end, but in those instances both systems had multiple interfaces, and public and private address space.

That's all besides the point though, the "Add" VPN configuration is disabled for me. :-(