From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Dec 31 17:32:24 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4BE7616A4CE for ; Wed, 31 Dec 2003 17:32:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from kientzle.com (h-66-166-149-50.SNVACAID.covad.net [66.166.149.50]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1441743D31 for ; Wed, 31 Dec 2003 17:32:22 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kientzle@acm.org) Received: from acm.org ([66.166.149.54]) by kientzle.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id i011W1kX016324; Wed, 31 Dec 2003 17:32:01 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kientzle@acm.org) Message-ID: <3FF37890.1040309@acm.org> Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 17:32:00 -0800 From: Tim Kientzle User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20031006 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Sam Leffler References: <16371.15032.415568.367500@canoe.dclg.ca> <200312311657.54270.sam@errno.com> <200312311704.47749.sam@errno.com> In-Reply-To: <200312311704.47749.sam@errno.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org cc: David Gilbert Subject: Re: ath driver and turning wireless off. X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: kientzle@acm.org List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 01:32:24 -0000 Sam Leffler wrote: > On Wednesday 31 December 2003 04:57 pm, Sam Leffler wrote: >>On Wednesday 31 December 2003 01:08 pm, David Gilbert wrote: >> >>>BTW... this Dell (D800) has the ability to turn the wireless hardware >>>off. ... Is the ath driver able to handle this with any degree of >>>gracefullness? >> >>If you mark the interface down the radio should be turned off. > > Actually, now that I think some more, these cards vary as to whether the > rfkill switch is handled in software or hardware. If the card needs software > support to turn off the radio then it's not there but will be soon. Is anyone working on "auto-dial" support? That is, where the radio shuts off automatically after a certain interval of inactivity and gets powered up automatically (including running dhclient, etc, to reconfigure the connection) when there's outgoing traffic. That would be very nice, indeed. I've been cursing the lack of this capability in a Dell Pocket PC handheld recently. Leaving the radio powered on really wrecks the battery life, and it is quite painful to be constantly turning off the radio manually. Tim