Interview with NetworkManager developer Dan Williams

0.7 has the ability (turned on in Fedora) to read configuration from
/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/<name>/ifcfg-* and use those as "system" connections that
override the ones in GConf.  They look and work just like normal connections, but may be used
to lock down network config of the machine as well.  They also provide the ability to bring up
the network before login.