Suspend And Keeping Network On

[klikklak]

Hi all,

One of the things that bugs with with eee is the fact that it doesn't come out of suspend cleanly and reopen the network when the lid is opened. Could pandora maintain an open network even with the lid closed and would it have enough battery power to do that for a day?

 

[sindbad]

Yes, no. If suspended, the os doesn't work, so it can't do anything. If not suspended when the lid is closed, the battery will run out in 10 hours.

 

[klikklak]

Right, so it could be used like a phone in that regard, 24/7 connectivity. Nice.

 

[flatmush]

QUOTE

Yes, no. If suspended, the os doesn't work, so it can't do anything. If not suspended when the lid is closed, the battery will run out in 10 hours.


Well if you powered down all the un-needed hardware and underclocked as far as the thing would go then I think you could get way more than 10 hours battery life out of it. On the psp I know you could underclock to 2MHz if you really wanted and the battery can last a lot longer at that speed.
Problem is that the wifi chipset probably uses quite a lot of power, but there was talk of this one using less power when idle so we'll have to see.

 

[kloplop321]

BAD idea to keep network on while suspended. WiFI does take power you know, sometimes more than the screen. What should happen is that the network is disconnected, and the thread for the process knows it is goint into sleep mode so it will preserve it's settings. Simple enough.

 

[Karel Jansens]

BAD idea to keep network on while suspended. WiFI does take power you know, sometimes more than the screen. What should happen is that the network is disconnected, and the thread for the process knows it is goint into sleep mode so it will preserve it's settings. Simple enough.

You can do it on the Nokia N8x0: suspend and keep the network connection up. It does affect the standby battery life, but less than you'd expect. The developers should take a good look at the network settings of the tablets, especially the one where you can tell the tablet to stop looking for connections after a given period is a nice (and battery saving) one.

 

[benjymous]

I'd been wondering something similar - if it could be in a low power mode, and sporadically search for public wifi points. If it found one it'd download emails / rss / etc, then go back into sleep mode again.

That way, when I walk across town to catch the bus home, it'll have snagged stuff for me as I walk past all the various places with wifi.

Maybe it could beep subtly at me when it does so, so I know to hang around outside somewhere until it's done

 

[Squidge]

Well if you powered down all the un-needed hardware and underclocked as far as the thing would go then I think you could get way more than 10 hours battery life out of it. On the psp I know you could underclock to

In practice, you shouldnt ever need to underclock the processor. If it's not doing anything, it'll be in low-power mode anyway, so underclocking will not save any power.

What you mean by cleanly reopen the network on the eee?

 

[klikklak]

To others: I was thinking more along the lines of bluetooth->phone connection, since wifi coverage over here is pathetic. The power usage difference is significant, isn't it?

What you mean by cleanly reopen the network on the eee?

Well, my 3g modem sometimes after suspend comes online on its own, but sometimes it needs taking the plug off and running wvdial couple times before I get pings etc. That's annoying, since on a bus ride you have some 20+minutes max. and if you have to fiddle for five minutes to get the network working it sort of defeats the purpose of it all. That said, I haven't looked in to this at all, maybe there is a hook for running wvdial when it comes out of suspend. That might not solve it though.

 

[nubie]

To others: I was thinking more along the lines of bluetooth->phone connection, since wifi coverage over here is pathetic. The power usage difference is significant, isn't it?

What you mean by cleanly reopen the network on the eee?

Well, my 3g modem sometimes after suspend comes online on its own, but sometimes it needs taking the plug off and running wvdial couple times before I get pings etc. That's annoying, since on a bus ride you have some 20+minutes max. and if you have to fiddle for five minutes to get the network working it sort of defeats the purpose of it all. That said, I haven't looked in to this at all, maybe there is a hook for running wvdial when it comes out of suspend. That might not solve it though.


Sounds like a driver problem with the 3g, not a problem with the Eee (at first glance.)

 

[ashdjones]

I'd been wondering something similar - if it could be in a low power mode, and sporadically search for public wifi points. If it found one it'd download emails / rss / etc, then go back into sleep mode again.

That way, when I walk across town to catch the bus home, it'll have snagged stuff for me as I walk past all the various places with wifi.

Maybe it could beep subtly at me when it does so, so I know to hang around outside somewhere until it's done

I like this idea. I walk past/into loads of places with free WIFI, it would great if my emails/rss etc were ready to read when I got home... without even taking the machine out of my bag!

 

[TaG]

I was lead to believe that connecting to unknown wireless networks was a potential security risk. Is that not the case, or will Pandora be sufficiently locked down to not worry?

 

[mindlord]

I was lead to believe that connecting to unknown wireless networks was a potential security risk. Is that not the case, or will Pandora be sufficiently locked down to not worry?

On my laptop I have it create a SSH tunnel to my computer at home and use that tunnel for anything I want secured (browsing, email, etc). I never use an unencrypted connection on an open wireless network. I plan on doing the same on the Pandora. Sure it's a bit slower, but at least I can rest easy.

 

[sindbad]

I was lead to believe that connecting to unknown wireless networks was a potential security risk. Is that not the case, or will Pandora be sufficiently locked down to not worry?

On my laptop I have it create a SSH tunnel to my computer at home and use that tunnel for anything I want secured (browsing, email, etc). I never use an unencrypted connection on an open wireless network. I plan on doing the same on the Pandora. Sure it's a bit slower, but at least I can rest easy.

Tor also works nicely.

 

[mindlord]

Tor also works nicely.

Tor is much slower than using a SSH tunnel on a good ISP. I have a sizable upstream (thank goodness), and it's only a couple milliseconds of latency for me when I'm on my work network or at the coffee house.

 

[TaG]

Forgive my lack of networling knowledge here...

What I meant was that when you connected to a 'hotspot' you open two way communications and I am sure I've read a warning somewhere that if this is not a legit hotspot they can see your data transmissions and could also potential access your machine if it wasn't locked down.

 

[Geuben]

Forgive my lack of networling knowledge here...

What I meant was that when you connected to a 'hotspot' you open two way communications and I am sure I've read a warning somewhere that if this is not a legit hotspot they can see your data transmissions and could also potential access your machine if it wasn't locked down.

I saw something like this on "The Real Hustle", they set up a laptop as a hot spot and made it look legit, people connected to it and they stole credit card info etc.

 

[mindlord]

Forgive my lack of networling knowledge here...

What I meant was that when you connected to a 'hotspot' you open two way communications and I am sure I've read a warning somewhere that if this is not a legit hotspot they can see your data transmissions and could also potential access your machine if it wasn't locked down.

There is always a certain amount of risk involved in using an open network. You never know who might be lurking in the shadows. Indeed the hot-spot administrator might be a rat bastard. On Windows machines this is more of a danger because of nasty protocols like Netbios, and port exploits that exist in the kernel. This is far less of a concern on Linux machines, especially those that don't have any public servers running.

As long as you aren't running anything odd in the background, like a Samba server. There isn't anything worth attacking on a Pandora. Indeed there won't be any servers at all running unless you install them yourself. I believe (can't seem to locate the post or who said it) that the Pandora would use user level accounts. The OS would be protected by root, and the only thing in any real danger would be whatever you had in your home directory, and this is assuming you were allowing remote connections to your user space via a SSH server, NFS share, Samba share, or some other server (why would you do that anyways?). If you are truly paranoid you could set up a firewall to block off all ports except those that you explicitly allow like port 80.

I imagine some people will put a web-server on the Pandora for serving up web pages when they aren't connected to the outside (for documentation, offline wikipedia, etc). It is fairly simple to block that off in the configuration, or open it up and share it with people in the vicinity with an ad-hoc network if you're feeling generous.

So as long as you're encrypting your sensitive traffic you will be seen, but not heard. I for one won't be concerned at all.

 

[benjymous]

Forgive my lack of networling knowledge here...

What I meant was that when you connected to a 'hotspot' you open two way communications and I am sure I've read a warning somewhere that if this is not a legit hotspot they can see your data transmissions and could also potential access your machine if it wasn't locked down.

My email server already runs shh, and I'm really not bothered if someone can see what rss feeds I'm looking at.

Tor also works nicely.

Although it's not as secure as people think - if you run an exit node you can sniff all the traffic that goes through your node (Link)