[BetterBatteryStats] Capp5050:
On wi-fi excessive drain (and other rants)

In an attempt to address my own wi-fi drain issues, I've read a lot of posts in this thread and others, but nobody seems to have a checklist of symptoms to look for. Maybe we can help each other by sharing useful, fact-supported information.

First - please don't add to the dozens of back and forth opinions on 'wifi uses more/(less) battery than 3G' It's academic, and won't solve my problem. In MY case, when wi-fi is ON, it drains juice excessively, so FOR ME, wi-fi not only uses more, it uses too much.

- Excessive drain via wi-fi is *likely* not a device problem, but rather a symptom. In my case, using BBS, CPU Spy, and Battery Monitor Widget, I've determined that wi-fi consumes battery because when connected, the device will not 'sleep' - even if I am not actively using wi-fi.

- Router Pings -- AP's/Routers will ping clients periodically. This definitely occurs in my case, but its unclear to me as to whether those pings should cause a 'wake' event (instinct tells me NO).

- Static IP -- I've been using static IP's for my primary devices for a while. FOR ME, it seems to have make no noticeable difference. For others it has, but it's never been clear to me as to why (perhaps there's a wake every time DHCP has to renew the IP?)

- DTIM -- I've also head of people having success increasing the DTIM Interval on their router to at least 10ms. ACTION: I've done this (be sure to decrease the Beacon Period if you do) , and haven't had time to determine if it helps (there's a great post somewhere around here on why this might actually help, though I remain skeptical).

- Packet Sniffing -- Recommended as a way to try to determine what's going on around the network that could be causing the issues. Great suggestion, using Shark for Android; but you have to know what you're looking at, and more importantly, what is 'acceptable' traffic vs. 'disruptive' traffic. Here's what I've found so far:

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Dormant Wi-Fi Network Activity

- From my Router: 192.168.1.1 - If it's true that some routers allow 'noise' which prevents device sleep, I suppose this would be it. However, I'm unqualified to interpret the contents of the packets or whether their frequency is excessive.

ACTION: <NONE>. Would appreciate help here.

- From my PC: I use iSyncr to synchronize my iTunes library with PowerPlayer. Until I started sniffing with Shark, I had no idea that iSyncr was pinging my phone, from my computer, even when the software wasn't connected. I'm also getting packets from my PC that I can't identify. ACTION: Don't know if it's a 'wake' event, but totally unnecessary, killed the resident iSyncr client. Can reactivate when syncing. Not sure what to do about other pings, but will A/B test.

- From ROKU: I use an Android app to control my Roku device. I found pings coming from the ROKU IP to the phone. 'Wake'-worthy? Not sure, because these problems started before Roku. ACTION: I have two apps on the Android; I'll try cutting each to find the varmint. If it's both, they're getting frozen (to isolate them as variables)

- To/From 74.125.93.188 -- Google. Tough one, because it's hard to avoid Google contacting themselves, though it surprises me that they don't use the 3G network instead. Note that I have DISABLED wi-fi-based location enhancement, but these pings could be coming from half a dozen other apps. ACTION: Have to leave this one alone right now. Presumably everyone with an Android device has these, so could be safe to exclude as an issue.

- I've seen some minor ones, like GoSMS making contact with a domain in China (which obviously concerns me, but that's another subject), but nothing (yet) in great volume.​

Would appreciate comparing others' findings.