Does not prioritise wired connection over wireless

[Chris Halse Rogers]

Binary package hint: indicator-network

When I have a wireless connection active and then plug in a wired ethernet connection the wired interface gets set up with an IP address as expected but the routing information is not updated to prefer the wired interface over the wireless.

Applications which already had a connection open on the wireless interface's IP obviously don't change interface, but new connections started up also use the wireless interface. I can reproduce this by connecting my wired interface while the wireless is active and then rsyncing over the local network. At this point I'll get ~2.5MiB/sec transfer rate. After disconnecting the wireless interface by selecting it in the network-indicator and restarting rsync I get a consistent 12MiB/sec transfer rate.

Since wireless interfaces are generally significantly slower than wired ethernet this results in needlessly sub-par network performance.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: indicator-network 0.2.5-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-5.6-generic 2.6.35-rc3
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-5-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Jun 24 12:44:15 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Alpha amd64 (20100622)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: indicator-network

[Kalle Valo (kvalo)]

connman is responsible for this, not indicator-network. Moving the bug to connman.

[SabreWolfy (sabrewolfy)]

Confirmed in Maverick Beta.

Laptop set to connect to local wireless automatically with fixed IP address. Also set to receive fixed IP when connected via Ethernet.

Plugged in ethernet cable and booted laptop and logged in. Maverick connected to the wireless AND the wired network. The latpop had two IP addresses -- one for eth0 and one for eth1.

Wired must take priority over wireless. Had to manually disconnect wireless.

[Kalle Valo (kvalo)]

Connman doesn't change the default route until the connection owning the route will get disconnected. So the behaviour you see is expected. I'm marking this as wishlist for now.

[SabreWolfy (sabrewolfy)]

Why is the behaviour as expected? Is the usual use-case not that wired will take priority over wireless? If you are working in an area where there is a wireless connection but you specifically plug in an ethernet cable, surely this means that you want to use the ethernet rather than that you want to use both?

[Alf Gaida (agaida)]

seven years of nothing are enough