wireless disconnecting when in sleep mode

Question

hello,   i have Dell D820 with Intel PRO 3945ABG wireless card. When notebook enters sleep mode and wakes up, wireless network is disconnected. Is that how it's supposed to be?

NemesisDB · Answer

yes ... suspending turns off all unnecessary hardware (except the ram).  hibernating turns off the ram as well by writing its contents to the hard drive beforehand.  regardless, the network adapter will be powered off in sleep mode and will thus be disconnected when you power back up.   it should reconnect though if you have told it to automatically connect.

ronss · Answer

i believe its a common problem,,,seems like others have the same problem. there are different levels of sleep mode, one where the memory is shut down and info stored on hard drive.. it could be that the computer is unable to load the network drivers after this..you might go into the bios and see if there are some settings that you are able to change this,...i am not sure

mrQQ · Answer

hm, i think i've seen laptops which can keep connection in sleep mode.. can that be true?

ronss · Answer

these are four levels of sleep mode-s1-s2-s3-s4,,,,not real sure if you can totally keep network connection is one of the upper levels of sleep, but you are probably loosing your connection because of it....as i stated, you might check your bios and see if you have any settings in there that you can change.

NemesisDB · Answer

I agree with ronss.   I'll also add that I seriously doubt you can make the computer enter S1 through S4 and maintain a wireless connection.  Even in S1 (which doesn't save much power at all), most of the perif devices will be turned off and the CPU will stop executing new instructions.   Now, the real question.  Why are you putting the machine to sleep?  On my laptop, I let it sleep for two totally different reasons.  The first is to save battery power when I'm idle for brief periods of time away from an AC source.  Often this involves lots of suspends and resumes.  The other time is at night.  I could just as easily turn the machine off, but I like the faser resume times.   With all power saving levels you face a trade-off.  Resume time (include the time to re-establish a network connection in this) vs power savings.  If you need quick access to your network connection, a better solution might be to just have your LCD power off and your HD spun-down.  This will save significant power but isn't actually an S1 through S4 state.   For overnight sleeping, you need at least S3.  Anything other than that wastes significant power and is also noisy as the fans generally remain running.   Hope this helps some.  Perhaps what you saw on those other machines was simply the monitor and HD going off but the CPU and ram (and network card) remaining active?

Networking, Internet, & Bluetooth

wireless disconnecting when in sleep mode

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