14 DAY TRIAL // Work on the next major NetworkManager 1.10 release started in early September under the 1.9.x umbrella, and the open-source network connection manager recently entered beta stages of development.
Developer Beniamino Galvani announced the release of NetworkManager 1.10 Beta (1.9.90), giving us an insight into the new features and improvements coming to this major release of the most used network connection management software for GNU/Linux distributions.
The biggest new feature of NetworkManager 1.10 appears to be initial support for the Open vSwitch open-source implementation of a distributed virtual multilayer switch, which will allow users to set up basic Open vSwitch configurations. Open vSwitch support will be enhanced in future releases.
Moreover, NetworkManager 1.10 will allow users to authenticate to Wi-Fi networks via WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup), adds support for activating Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) connections on non-Ethernet network interfaces, as well as to implement support for Wi-Fi PMF (Protected Management Frames, 802.11w).
Bluetooth NAP profiles to be supported in NetworkManager 1.10
Being a major release and all that, NetworkManager 1.10 will also implement support for Bluetooth NAP (Network Access Point) profiles, and support for configuring multiple IPv6 default routes that are coming through the registration authority (RA). Each of these routes will be configured with the announced preference.
It will also be possible to specify the routing table for each static route, disable connectivity checking via the D-Bus interface, specify an explicit routing table for non-static routes, including those IPv6 autoconf, DHCP, and device-routes, as well as to change MAC addresses for bond connections in the text-based interface.
Other than that, NetworkManager 1.10 will support the group-forward-mask property for Bridge connections, disable background scanning for non-WPA-Enterprise Wi-Fi networks, and adequately calculate and expose the maximum rate of wireless APs supporting the 802.11 standards to D-Bus.
A new connection.auth-retry property will add support for configuring how often authentication is prompted before the configuration fails, NetworkManager-wait-online.service gained support for starting the NetworkManager.service systemd service, and the systemd-resolved DNS plugin properly can now handle DNS priority setting.
Of course, there will also be lots of other performance improvements and bug fixes that should be revealed when the final release hits the streets. Until that happens, you can download the first beta release of NetworkManager 1.10 right now from our website if you fancy compiling it on your favorite GNU/Linux distribution.