How does Gentoo handle wireless roaming?

[joeljkp]

I have a laptop with a Broadcom wireless card that I get working with Linuxant's driverloader (or ndiswrapper). I'm moving around frequently between networks with WEP, no WEP, VPN, no VPN, etc., so I need something that will let me connect, disconnect, and change networks and settings automatically (or at least easily).

Windows XP does this wonderfully. It stores all the WEP and SSID settings, detects which network is available at the time, and connects automatically.

How does Gentoo handle this?

[Vogateer]

If you like GTK, you can try WiFi Radar. I think there is an equivalent program in KDE, though I can't recall the name of it. Is that what you're looking for?

[racoontje]

For known networks, I have a set of scripts I guess, but I'm a CLI junkie

For wardriving I prefer kismet.

[Randseed]

I regularly connect to two networks. One uses WEP. Neither of them transmit their SSID. To connect to them, I have a script for each that sets the appropriate values, brings the network up, and sets up my VPN. It seemed like the simplest way to do it at the time and I haven't bothered to change.

The only problem I have with it so far is related to the VPN, and isn't a major problem at that. To get the VPN to work, I have to hardcode a route to the VPN server from my laptop. When I'm not on my home network, everything gets blown through the VPN. When I'm home, though, the VPN address is a "real" address, and therefore gets routed directly instead of over the VPN, and therefore goes over the 802.11b unencrypted. The simplest solution, I think, is just to use the IP address of the end of the VPN tunnel to reference the VPN server. Not elegant, but it works.

[joeljkp]

I think what I'm looking for is something like this: http://people.redhat.com/dcbw/NetworkManager/

It's included in FC3, but it needs CVS dbus and hal, so making it work on Gentoo would be a real pain.

Anyone know when the new wireless-aware baselayout is coming to stable?