Network Manager 0.8.1 comes with a lot of new features

While going through the new improvements in Fedora 13, I came across the Network Manager being used in it and was completely amazed to see the latest improvements in it. It now supports almost everything and best of all, now you can even use a commandline tool, cnetworkmanager, to manage your network connections. I never really paid any attention to the application but now I am falling in love with it.

I still remember how I used to have a lot of trouble configuring xDSL modems through Network Manager. Since then I always used "pppoeconf" for configuring modem connections. With the new additional networking devices coming these days its even more important for Network Manager to support connectivity through them. And with every new release NM is getting better and better, the latest stable 0.8.1 introduces a lot of new features - have support for a number of mobile broadband devices, IPv6, support for Personal Area Networking and older Bluetooth Dial-up networking (DUN) protocols.

Lets take a better look at what all major features 0.8.1 comes with:

1. Added support for ModemManager which will introduce the support for various mobile broadband devices - GSM, UMS and CDMA cards. Modem Manager already offers a variety of cool features - signal strength display, select 2G/3G modes, you can even turn off roaming to avoid extra charges.
2. Static and autoconfigured IPv6 support. It also has support for DHCPv6 if you are using dhclient 4.0 or above.
3. Bluetooth is now supported. Added PAN support for connecting to Internet with 3G and also support for older DUN protocols.
4. All the hardware detection is done with udev instead of HAL, so things should work smoothly.

And you can give a try to this great tool in Fedora 13 releasing this month.