Intel's IWD 1.20 Released

[jokeyrhyme]

Is there an advantage to choosing wpa_supplicant over iwd and vice versa?

[pininety]

I use IWD on Arch with NetworkManager. This is in /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/wifi_backend.conf

[device]
wifi.backend=iwd
wifi.iwd.autoconnect=yes

I have no issues with reconnecting and auto-switching from 5GHz to 2.5GHz and visa versa.

Lucky you. Every time I try it, it does not work proplery. It also has issues with systems there you update your kernel but do not reboot. On top of that it seems impossible to create a stateless (speak only store state in /home/) system as the daemon stores passwords systemwide. Some of that might be fixable in the future and I wish this would happen as it is now, it is jsut not usable for me.

[sinepgib]

Looking at the bug report, it looks like this also includes reconnecting to a network after booting. At least with WPA_Supplicant, when I boot my laptop it automatically connects to the network.

That's odd, on my iwd-only setup it does autoconnect on boot and on resume.

Since this is a major bug, I'm thinking they could fix networkManager until the release, if they want to.
Or Ubuntu developers is letting again others to do all the hard work before they switch as the do with PipeWire...

I was thinking exactly that. Why can't NM find out it lost connection and send the reconnect command. It may even be a better approach, depending on who you ask (I wouldn't agree because I use iwd only, but who knows?).



On a more general note, I do agree with the sentiment it's not ready for mainstream use.

[markus40]

I use IWD on Arch with NetworkManager. This is in /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/wifi_backend.conf

[device]
wifi.backend=iwd
wifi.iwd.autoconnect=yes

I have no issues with reconnecting and auto-switching from 5GHz to 2.5GHz and visa versa.

[CommunityMember]

I'm using NetworkManager with the default setup (so no IWD) and more often then not it doesn't automatically reconnect to a network either. So I'm not convinced IWD is involved in that bug.

The (original) bug reporter, at least at one time, indicated that NM & IWD worked for them (after various updates to NM and IWD), but someone else chimed in with a random "me too" but had not (at least at that time) done the harder work to fully log and document if the details were the same (or just some similar results).

I have no doubt there are more than enough bugs (in NM, IWD, WPA_Supplement, etc.) to go around, but reports without detailed reproducers do not help drive fixes.

[Vlad42]

It would be great if Canonical would use this for the next Ubuntu release!

Unless this has been changed fairly recently, then connecting to networks using WPA Enterprise, 802.1X, requires the user to manually create the network configuration file. With WPA_Supplicant & NetworkManager, this is handled automatically. No major distribution is going to ship with a default network daemon that requires the end user to manually create the network configuration files.

[Vlad42]

I'm using NetworkManager with the default setup (so no IWD) and more often then not it doesn't automatically reconnect to a network either. So I'm not convinced IWD is involved in that bug.

Looking at the bug report, it looks like this also includes reconnecting to a network after booting. At least with WPA_Supplicant, when I boot my laptop it automatically connects to the network.

Edit: Also, if my laptop looses connection to one network, say a 5GHz network, then it will automatically try to reconnect to the 2.4GHz variant (assuming I had connected to it before so it has the credentials saved).

[Vistaus]

It would not. For a normal user iwd via NetworkManager is not usable. It doesn't automatically connect to a network, If connection was lost, it also doesn't auto-reconnect. This alone is a No-Go and there is more…
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/-/issues

I'm using NetworkManager with the default setup (so no IWD) and more often then not it doesn't automatically reconnect to a network either. So I'm not convinced IWD is involved in that bug.

[spockfish]

It would be great if Canonical would use this for the next Ubuntu release!

Running iwd icm with NetworkManager on Fedora for quite a while without any issues (and better roaming behaviour than with wpa_supplicant).

[Danny3]

It would not. For a normal user iwd via NetworkManager is not usable. It doesn't automatically connect to a network, If connection was lost, it also doesn't auto-reconnect. This alone is a No-Go and there is more…
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/-/issues

Since this is a major bug, I'm thinking they could fix networkManager until the release, if they want to.
Or Ubuntu developers is letting again others to do all the hard work before they switch as the do with PipeWire...