NetworkManager

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NetworkManager

The default NetworkManager applet
Developer:	GNOME Foundation
Latest release:	0.6.4 / July 13, 2006
OS:	Linux
Use:	Network Management
License:	Open Source
Website:	[1]

NetworkManager is a software utility aimed at simplifying the use of computer networks on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.

The project was initiated in 2004 by Red Hat, with the goal of enabling Linux users to more easily deal with modern networking needs, particularly wireless networking. NetworkManager takes an opportunistic approach to network selection, attempting to use the best available connection as outages occur, or the user roams between wireless networks. Ethernet connections are preferred over "known" wireless networks, which are preferred over wireless networks with SSIDs the user has never connected to. The user is prompted for WEP or WPA keys as needed.

NetworkManager is currently being adopted in some newer, particularly GNOME-based Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Fedora Core and SUSE. The project is notable for being among the first major Linux desktop components to utilize D-BUS and HAL extensively. The absence of a compatible HAL service has, to date, prevented NetworkManager from being available on many non-Linux operating systems, but progress is underway to bring it to FreeBSD and others (HAL is now available for FreeBSD).

NetworkManager is architected into two components: a service which manages connections and reports network changes, and a graphical desktop applet which allows the user to manipulate network connections. Both components are intended to be reasonably portable, and the applet is available to desktop environments which implement the Freedesktop.org System Tray Protocol, including GNOME, KDE and Xfce. As the components communicate via D-BUS, applications can be written to be "link-aware", or replace the provided applet entirely. One example is KNetworkManager, a KDE frontend to NetworkManager developed by Novell for SUSE Linux.