wifi0 reporting packets when on wired LAN

[Bill Moseley <moseley hank org>]

This probably has nothing to do with Network Manager, but maybe
someone can point me in the right direction.

I'm having problems when I connect my laptop to my wired LAN.  I often
have it connected to the LAN with the lid closed and I ssh into the
laptop form another machine on the LAN.  When the gdm login screen
times out (goes blank) I then notice a lot of latency in my ssh
sessions.  Typing becomes difficult due to delays.

Nothing is running to use up CPU, and it only seems to happen when gdm
times out (not when I'm actually logged into the gdm session to gnome
desktop and the screen saver starts).  top and strace on gdm or X or
gdmgreeter doesn't show any activity.

I also was looking at ifconfig and netstat to see if the interface was
being used.  No luck there, either.  Odd problem.

But looking at ifconfig prompted this question:

My laptop has an atheros card and ifconfig shows it as ath0.  There's
also a wifi0 interface shown.  ath0 is my normal interface when
wireless is running.

I'm curious of: 1) why wifi0 shows up, and 2) why wifi0 shows slowly
increasing RX and TX packets when I'm only connected to my wired LAN
on eth0.  My wireless interface ath0, on the other hand shows zero RX
and TX packets.


Thanks,



-- 
Bill Moseley
moseley hank org