[ltp] Re: T30: Turn off the WiFi Radio?

[Atul Chitnis]

On Fri, 7 May 2004, Daniel Pittman wrote:

> You should be able to do:
> 
> ] iwconfig wlan0 txpower off
> 
> That will turn off the radio.  

Yes, this is what I read. And running this correctly kills my link to the 
AP. What I would really like to do is *query* the status of the radio. I 
can do this under Windows, so the API for it definitely exists. But 
iwconfig doesnt seem to offer any way to query the current value of a 
parameter.

> Conversely, to turn it on again:
> 
> ] iwconfig wlan0 txpower on

Amazingly, this failed :)

# iwconfig wlan0 txpower on
Error for wireless request "Set Tx Power" (8B26) :
    invalid argument "on".

However, the "auto" keyword worked:

# iwconfig wlan0 txpower auto
#

and after a few seconds, it resumed teh connection to the AP.

> Also, the driver should power on the radio automatically when you bring
> the interface up.

Yes, it does. However, given Redhat's penchant of bringing up all 
interfaces, even if not set to ONBOOT, this is actually the "problem 
feature", since my radio gets turned on even when I am not using the wlan 
connection.

IAC, I will do a few test runs now to see how battery performance gets 
affected with various settings.

Thanks!

Atul

-- 
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Atul Chitnis       | achitnis@exocore.com
Exocore Consulting | http://www.exocore.com
Bangalore, India   | +91 (80) 2344-0397
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