My laptop started misbehaving, or Gnome Network Manager's graphical user interface did.
I resorted to nmcli, the Network Manager command line tool. It's a bit baroque.
So here is a simple little Emacs Lisp interface to nmcli.
It's in marmalade - add marmalade as a package repository and then do:
M-x package-install [RET] gnomenm [RET]
Here are the useful commands:
Connect to a specific ap.
Disconnect from the current Access Point.
Flip the AP to the last but one connected to.
If you don't have two APs in the history it does nothing.
This is really useful if you switch between a pair of APs like I do. I recommend using a keychord like:
(key-chord-define-global "90" 'gnomenm-flip)
See http://www.emacswiki.org/KeyChord for details on KeyChord.
What's the network status?
Toggle whether networking is enabled or not.