Ethernet/Wifi goes to sleep

[Dave Cav]

I have started having a problem with my shop computer, which is a four or five year old generic HP mini tower. I have a wired Ethernet connection to it as well as a WiFi dongle (an antenna that plugs into a USB port). The problem is that whenever the computer goes to sleep or into screen saver mode the Ethernet and Wifi disconnect and it can take a minute or three for the connection to come back. Rebooting the computer doesn't seem to make any difference. None of the other internet-connected devices in the house seem to have this problem, so it's apparently something with this particular computer. It's not a huge issue but it's inconvenient. Any ideas?

thanks

[Doug Weiner]

Just wondering why you are using both hard-wired and WiFi? Maybe just using the wired connection would help.

[Dave Cav]

I have some other wifi devices that need to talk to the computer.

[glenn bradley]

You don't mention your OS but, the ramping down or turning off of peripherals is often part of your POWER profile. This group of settings tells the computer what to do after a certain period of time without activity or per a schedule. The later versions of Windows hide these things better and better but, if you look under power settings in Windows, system parameters in UX's and I-don't-know under Apple's OS (:)) you will probably find what you are after.

[Dave Cav]

I'm using Windows 10, don't know if it's Home or Pro. i've drilled down as deep as I can in the Power and Security settings and and in Hardware Manager and everything seems to be set correctly.

[Mike Soaper]

You might consider trying the Windows "Performance Monitor" in "Start" "Windows Administrative" to monitor the wired and wireless adapters. It might help to isolate which adapter may be causing an issue.

[Paul F Franklin]

For starters, change your power setting so the computer never sleeps, and turn the screen saver off, and see if that helps.

[Jim Becker]

I have some other wifi devices that need to talk to the computer.
Not specific to the "sleeping" issue, but unless you've setup a completely separate wireless network from your wired network, the wireless devices should be able to communicate with your computer on the wired network with no issue via your router/access point. Having two active network adapters in a computer is a more complex setup than most folks would entertain if you want them both to be active simultaneously. MacOS permits a priority so one can set wired as primary with wireless as backup (or vice versa) with only one actually communicating on the network. I'm not sure what the current state of such things is in Windows because I don't use it much anymore other than for CAD/CAM operations.

[Dave Cav]

Not specific to the "sleeping" issue, but unless you've setup a completely separate wireless network from your wired network, the wireless devices should be able to communicate with your computer on the wired network with no issue via your router/access point. Having two active network adapters in a computer is a more complex setup than most folks would entertain if you want them both to be active simultaneously. MacOS permits a priority so one can set wired as primary with wireless as backup (or vice versa) with only one actually communicating on the network. I'm not sure what the current state of such things is in Windows because I don't use it much anymore other than for CAD/CAM operations.

I've changed the times on both the screen saver and sleep mode; we'll see if that makes an difference.

This is the computer I mainly use for my ham radio stuff. What I'm trying to do is connect to a WiFi Hotspot for a DMR radio. The Hotspot needs both a USB connection for setting the internal configurations, and a Wifi connection to talk to the network.

I'm using a Google Wifi mesh network for both my wired and wireless internet. The cable internet from Comcast comes in via a Surfboard modem, which then feeds a Google Wifi puck, which in turn feeds a gigibit switch to all my wired ethernet connections. There are three Google pucks throughout the house and garage and all have wired backhaul connections to the switch. The Wifi and Ethernet all seem to work fine on my other wired and wireless devices.

FWIW, I am also having trouble getting the desktop computer to talk to the Hotspot (for configuration purposes) either via Wifi or the USB....The hotspot SEEMS to be working fine, but I can't get into the configuration menus to actually watch the thruput. I suspect driver issues but Hardware Manager says all the drivers are good.

Sometimes I miss DOS.

[Jim Becker]

What I don't understand is "why" you want the desktop to use the WiFi connection when it's already on the network via Ethernet. Anything it needs to send to the wireless devices can go out via the access points on you mesh network. A device only needs one connection to the network to interact with everything else on the same network, regardless of connection type.

[Dave Cav]

Maybe that's part of the problem, too many connections. I'll take the wifi dongle off the computer and try again.

I think I solved the initial problem of the Ethernet not waking up by changing the configuration so the computer doesn't go to sleep, just the screen saver. All of my VFDs in the shop probably consume as much or more parasitic power as the computer.....

[Lee Schierer]

My wifi card in my Asus laptop started doing the same thing a few months ago. I can manually start the wifi, but the computer doesn't remember that it is supposed to turn it on when it boots up.

[Lee DeRaud]

You don't mention your OS but, the ramping down or turning off of peripherals is often part of your POWER profile.Normally the default power-save settings for desktop towers aren't quite that aggressive. I'm wondering if whichever widget (Google puck?) is handling DHCP is using stupidly short lease times. Might be worth setting that box to static IP and see if the issue goes away.

[Lee DeRaud]

Another thing...probably won't work for the Wifi, but worth a try on the wired: go into the BIOS settings and enable "Wake on LAN". That will keep the Ethernet interface powered up even when the computer is in sleep mode.

[Lee Schierer]

Just an update. Two days ago, I had windows reset my network and so far it remembers that I have a wifi card and that it is supposed to start when I start my laptop. I went to settings, Network & Internet, status and scrolled down to the bottom on the right side and clicked on Reset Network, then clicked yes.