Comment 251 for bug 401126

I also tried that a few days ago and was on the edge of reporting it here, but came to the same conclusion. Helped somehow for sometime, but not really.

Still there is a workaround that is at least a little better than unload/loading the module (which interrupts all connections and needs a few seconds AND needs to be done manually): ping something (eg. a host on the internet or your access point).

just open a terminal and start a ping and your connection won't go down. Mine has been up for over an hour, while on battery power and I did not use my netbook for about 30 minutes (I have no automatic suspend - just screen blanking). seems to be working ;)