Brainstorm

Connect to Internet on demand and disconnect automatically

Posted on 2010-01-17 11:57 UTC by Mathias Spoerr. Status: Under consideration, Categories: Internet & Networking.

Internet on Demand

My "old" Symbian phone is only online, when an application requests the connection. After the application completes the task, the internet connection is closed automatically. A good example is the mail client -> internet connection is only needed during synchronization. I would like to have this functionality on Maemo too, to save battery life.

There are two discussion threads on talk.maemo.org:

Brainstorm: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=41021
General: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=38832

There a two bugs with similar requests:

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5422
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6627

Solutions for this brainstorm

Solution #1: User defineable connection behaviour

Posted on 2010-01-17 11:57 UTC by Mathias Spoerr.

A user should be able to define, which applications are allowed to automatically establish the internet connection. As a second step, it should also be possible to define which internet connections are allowed by a specific application.

The idle timeout, after which the connection is closed again, should als be user configureable.

Examples:

Mail client and browser are allowed to establish all available internet connections (WLAN, UMTS, GPRS...)
Skype should only be alowed to use the Home WLAN

Solution #2: Automatic behaviour

Posted on 2010-01-17 12:03 UTC by Mathias Spoerr.

Two possible settings: Always online and Connect on Demand.

If the user choses Setting #2, the internet connection is only established, when an application needs connectivity. After some idle time, the connection is closed again automatically.

Solution #3: 3g Throttler

Posted on 2010-01-19 17:41 UTC by Chris Phillips.

This seems like a more battery efficient method but similar proposal. Make 2g as a default connection (unless within recognised wifi hotspot) - turn on 3G internet (if no wifi connection) for specified programmes, then turn off 3g when specified programme closed. Brainstorm here: http://maemo.org/community/brainstorm/view/3g_throttler-battery_saver

Solution #4: Reduce time to live of connections state

Posted on 2010-01-24 13:30 UTC by inode firewall.

For example : CLOSE_WAIT connection state seems to be too long ;

Register