On Tue, 25 Jul 2006 09:20:06 -0700 Auke Kok wrote: > Alan Stern wrote: > > During a Power Management session at the Ottawa Linux Symposium, it was > > generally agreed that network interface drivers ought to automatically > > suspend their devices (if possible) whenever: > > > > (1) The interface is ifconfig'ed down, or > > > > (2) No link is available. > > > > Presumably (1) should be easy enough to implement. (2) might or might not > > be feasible, depending on how much WOL support is available. (It might > > not be feasible at all for wireless networking.) Still, there can be no > > question that it would be a Good Thing for laptops to power-down their > > ethernet controllers when the network cable is unplugged. > > > > Has any progress been made in this direction? If not, a natural approach > > would be to start with a reference implementation in one driver which > > could then be copied to other drivers. > > > Intel's newer e1000's (ich7 onboard e1000 and newer versions for instance) > already support this feature partially - the MAC stays on but the PHY can be > powered off when no link is present. > > In order to enable this feature you will need to turn it on explicitly at > load > time: > > modprobe e1000 SmartPowerDownEnable=1
Please add that to Documentation/networking/e1000.txt. > Allthough not the entire NIC is powered off, it still saves a significant > part > of the power consumed by the NIC. All bits help. The power automatically > restores once a cable is plugged in. --- ~Randy - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
