Wireless Slow When Unplugged

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Guest

When I run on battery power, the wireless connection is absurdly slow. I'm
trying to see if there's a setting I am missing, but I'm not sure what would
cause this - no power save modes are indicated, and I think that's a rather
bizarre result.

The card is a broadcom card in a new Dell D620 - so I think it's Dell's 1490
card as well.

Does anyone know if Vista "throttles" wireless to save power? That would be
somewhat of a strange choice.
 
It sounds as though you already checked this, but I'm not certain of that
because of the way you worded your message. You said "no power save modes are
indicated." You mean that you went into the management settings for the
wireless network device itself and looked at all of the settings to be sure
that everything was set for maximum performance rather than maximum battery
life, correct? If you only set the general Windows settings for maximum
performance then it's possible that power saving enhancements to the drivers
for this device are still in effect when the system is on battery power.

That's about all I can think of, off the bat.

- jimmuh
 
Try checking the Dell download site for your Service Tag #. There may be
BIOS updates that correct this issue. In fact, if you haven't downloaded
any BIOS updates yet, I'll be willing to bet that there have been a couple
of them released since you bought the computer. Also, check your Power
settings in the system BIOS and make sure the BIOS is not throttling down
power to the WLAN while on battery.

-- Dave
 
That was the problem. I solved a bunch of other issues by upgrading to RC2,
but that one was persistent. Vista throttles WLAN performance on battery when
set to balanced mode - setting it to "max performance" overrode that and
speed was normal.

Unfortunately, nothing tells the user that that's going to happen, so I bet
this will be a major issue for system builders.
 
This is because some APs are not compatible with the 802.11 standard when it
comes to power management. In these cases, the symptoms are loss of
connectovoty alltogether or very slow throughput. Plugging in the computer to
AC, or, as you noted, changing the power savings mode for the WLAN NIC to
maximum performance should fix the problem.
 
Hi, any of you guys had any trouble getting RC2 to accept a valid
WPA-PSK (AES or TKIP) key? Mine works with a Rlaink RT2500 on XP
driver, but RC2 wont accept my key. The Cards utility allows it to
work, but that is not what I prefer.
 
Pekka,
Thanks for that info;definetly is an issue for me. And that did the
trick. Weird though; you'de think Intel; which I have-3945abg-would be up on
this already.
Any fixes from you guys? or is it a vendor prob? I'de think if it's
happening to Intels newest nic; someones looking at this; from your
end;correct????
And if not; please fix it-lol-jk.
Seriously;changing from balanced to max performance worked;while I'm
unplugged.
I'de think that Intel would be together with this spec; weird.

Jeff
 
Pekka,

I'm going to bet that's what's going on here. I set it to the second-highest
performance setting and it seems to work fine.

My concern more is about the general consumer, who wouldn't know what to do
- they're going to flood support desks with calls about their network not
working properly if this is the case, most people won't know to check the
mobility or power settings.

This is something would seemingly have to be addressed in either a system
update or notice on the computer - such as a help file that states "Are you
noticing a slowdown in network speed? Your wireless system may not support
802.11 power management. Click here to change the wireless power management
settings."
 
Yes, this is very difficult for users to figure out. We're changing the
default on RTM such that the default power plan Balanced will have High
Peformance as default for WLAN NICs. However, OEMs may override this default
to their likings so depending on the OEM you may have different settings by
default.

This change obviously does not fix the root of the problem but provides a
workaround. The real fix needs to take place on the AP side. We're working
with industry partners & WiFi Alliance on this for a longer term solution. In
the meantime, the quick chnage plus the upcoming KB articles hopefully help.

The chnages to help content did not make it to RTM but we will likely update
the help content post RTM.
 
the issue is definitely on the Access Point side, not on the client NIC. See
the post below for more details on what we're doing to improve this.

-pekka
 
Pekka,
Thanks for the follow up-oops;my bad; Linksys;then;needs to get up to
speed.(or power-lol)
Thanks; definitely a tip I've filed. For those eventual calls-lol

Jeff
 
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