I am an experienced Linux user and have just purchased 3 Pi B's with Wi-Pi's to use in a number of networked educational projects. I have downloaded and installed the latest approved raspbian image and set up the three Pi's to connect to my router. During the set up of headless remote access on the Pi's I found one really irritating problem with the WiPis.
Outgoing network connections from the Pi via wireless work fine. Even if the device has been left a while the dongle wakes up quickly enough and connects. However, going the other way (e.g. SSHing into the Pi) only works if you get in quick. If you leave the Pi's even a single minute, the dongles then refuse to allow incoming connections until woken from the Pi (or re-plugged). Once connected, you have to have a pretty heavy keepalive to keep the connection up. The only way I've found of keeping the dongles awake is to have a process on the Pi continuously pinging the router.
There are no useful modparam options for the rt2800usb driver (where I would normally expect power management to be switchable). Any ideas please?
Thanks in advance
Stephen