A brief overview of the widely used NetworkManager system is given. The system is used in two ways. Networked applications need to be aware of connectivity changes. Infrastructure supporting this is provided to application developers and made as simple as possible to encourage adoption. Control applications responsible for configuration and status feedback must be usable but allow complex configuration. We summarize the discussions that informed the design. Finally we describe the requirements placed on the system by administrators, who require central configurability as well as secure storage of network authentication credentials.
Will Stephenson is a long time KDE e.V. developer. He is part of the KDE team at Novell, with a responsibility for network and PIM applications on the desktop. His development interests lie taking the data and functions these provide and making them available all over the desktop, outside the bounds of traditional mail and IM clients.
