Recientemente new stable version of the interface to simplify the configuration of network parameters Network Manager 1.16. NetworkManager is a software utility to simplify the use of computer networks on Linux and other Unix-based operating systems.
This utility takes an opportunistic approach to network selection, trying to use the best available connection when outages occur, or when the user moves between wireless networks.
You prefer Ethernet connections over "known" wireless networks. The user is prompted for WEP or WPA keys, as required.
NetworkManager has two components:
- a service that manages connections and reports of changes in the network.
- a graphical desktop application that allows the user to manipulate network connections. The nmcli applet provides similar functionality on the command line.
On the other hand lPlugins to support VPN, OpenConnect, PPTP, OpenVPN, and OpenSWAN are developed as part of their own development cycles.
Main new features of NetworkManager 1.16
With this new release of NetworkManager 1.16 Support for WireGuard VPN tunnels has been added.
The WireGuard protocol is much simpler than IPsec and the implementation is faster than OpenVPN several times.
All options for configuring WireGuard are available through the D-Bus API and libnm. The ability to create and manage connection profiles for WireGuard has been added to nmcli.
El support to configure direct wireless connections in P2P mode (Wi-Fi Direct), allowing Wi-Fi devices to communicate directly without routers and access points.
This feature can be used to cast screen content to another device using the Miracast protocol in GNOME.
La support for authentication and key creation SAE keys (Concurrent Peer Authentication) provide a more secure password-based authentication method.
SAE is based on the Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol using finite cyclic groups.
SAE is an improvement to the security at the time of the handshake, which is when the network key is exchanged. In this way, WPA3 promises to provide robust security even when short or weak passwords are used, that is, they are short or do not include letters, numbers and symbols.
The resulting session key, which is received by each side of the connection to authenticate the session, is generated based on the password information, the keys for each system, and the MAC addresses of both sides.
This new version of NetworkManager 1.16 supports WPA3 wireless security technology, who provides protection against password guessing attacks (will not allow selection of passwords offline) and uses the SAE authentication protocol.
The dracut module can be used to convert specified network settings in the kernel startup parameters to the NetworkManager format.
After the successful initialization of the network connection, NetworkManager in the initial stage of the download completes its execution, and the management of network devices after the download is complete picks up the usual NetworkManager instance.
The Wi-Fi based IWD daemon backend developed by Intel as an alternative to wpa_supplicant supports the creation of access points and direct connection to wireless networks in Ad-hoc mode.
It has also provided greater precision in evaluating the status of network connections. Status can now be monitored through individual devices and separately for IPv4 and IPv6,
Finally support for managing DNS settings for systemd-resolved without using systemd-resolved as the main DNS plugin in NetworkManager.
How to get NetworkManager 1.16?
For those interested in being able to obtain this new version of NetworkManager 1.16, you should know that at the moment there are no packages built for Ubuntu or derivatives. So if you want to get this version they must build NetworkManager 1.16 from source code.
Although it is a matter of a few days for it to be incorporated into the official Ubuntu repositories for its prompt update.
How do I install it?