Roamabout Access Point; Roamabout Client - Cabletron Systems RoamAbout Access Point Manual

802.11 Power Management
The RoamAbout PC Card 802.11 power management is separate from any power
management function on your computer.

RoamAbout Access Point

The RoamAbout Access Point automatically supports 802.11 power management. The
only parameter that can be set is the Delivery Traffic Indication Message (DTIM) interval,
which sets the buffering time. The default value of 1 corresponds to 100 milliseconds of
sleep time. It is highly recommended that you do not change this value.

RoamAbout Client

You can enable or disable power management on a RoamAbout client. With power
management enabled, the client goes into sleep mode to minimize power consumption. The
wireless traffic is buffered in the Access Point that the client uses to connect to the network.
At regular intervals (defined by the Maximum Sleep Duration field), the client checks for
network traffic addressed to the client. If there is no traffic addressed to the client, the client
returns to sleep mode. If traffic is buffered at the Access Point, the client collects the
buffered messages prior to returning to sleep mode.
The following discusses how power management can impact data throughput of the
wireless network.
•
Transaction processing applications show little or no difference in network
performance when using power management. Examples of this type of application are
hand-held scanners or clients that use the wireless network only to send and receive
e-mail.
•
You may experience longer network response times when you transfer large files
between the network and the client while power management is enabled. The size of
the files and the recurrence of file transfers are a factor. If modifying a document over
the network, any auto save feature could cause frequent file transfers.
•
The Access Point could cause longer network response times if a number of clients use
the same Access Point for buffering messages while in sleep mode.
There are two power management parameters on RoamAbout clients:
•
Receive All Required Multicasts. Keep this enabled to receive multicast messages
from the wireless network. Missing these messages might result in losing the network
connection or other network problems.
You can disable this option to achieve the best possible power savings. However, make
sure that the wireless LAN, the higher layer protocols of the network system, and the
application running on your device do NOT need multicast messages for proper
communication.
2-10 Understanding Wireless Network Characteristics