# iwlagn consuming too much power

## stuNNed2

i run a laptop and just noticed driver iwlagn for the intel 5000 a/g/n wifi card is consuming a lot of power.  is there a way to cut back on wireless power consumption?  `iwconfig wlan0 power on` seems to have no affect.

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## Shining Arcanine

 *stuNNed2 wrote:*   

> i run a laptop and just noticed driver iwlagn for the intel 5000 a/g/n wifi card is consuming a lot of power.  is there a way to cut back on wireless power consumption?  `iwconfig wlan0 power on` seems to have no affect.

 

Wireless interfaces use a great deal of power. I have done some power measurements on them in the past and there is not much you can do to reduce their power consumption in my experience. Short of turning it off, any sort of significant savings would likely require implementing driver support for modifying the transmit power, which, based off my experience with the iwl3945 driver, requires driver modifications, assuming it is possible for the software to specify those things to the hardware.

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## stuNNed2

is there really a difference in enabling power management in the driver?  i really don't see any in powertop.

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## Etal

Powertop won't show you the exact amount you're using - it shows estimates based on cpu wakeups. The only way to test how much power you save is by doing it empirically.

You could try this line, this is a tip powertop gave me:

```
iwconfig wlan0 power timeout 500ms
```

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## albright

 *Quote:*   

> iwconfig wlan0 power on` seems to have no affect.

 

there are big problems with power saving with iwlagn it seems.

see this discussion, maybe also a fix,

http://art.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=8800758

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## stuNNed2

thanks all for the input it seems turning on power management for iwlagn is the only thing that barely helps. 

17.8% (127.2)   [Rescheduling interrupts] <kernel IPI>  -is the next greatest power consumer by far on an Intel Core Duo2 laptop, according to powertop.

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