powerline 1000 power saving mode issue

I have PL1200s with a similar problem - they enter power save mode approximately whenever they feel like it ... even when actively in use ... and then hang forever.  Whe it happens, I have to reboot (pull out / plug in again) one of the units to get the bridge operating again.

I have had no luck using the ZyXel software:  it is able to turn on/off the power save _setting_ in the PL1200s, but they seem to ignore the setting and power save is always enabled.  Don't know if that's also the case for the 1000s.

My solution [on Windows] was to set up a high priority ping task that runs at startup.  I find that if I continually ping across the powerline bridge, then it stays up for me.  The downside is the units never  go into power save mode, and there is a bit less bandwidth available due to all the ping packets. 

I've experimented somewhat using [SysInternals] psping.exe which can vary the timing of the pings and the size of the packet payload.  I had thought maybe I could limit the "maintenance" bandwidth by pinging once every 20 or 30 seconds, maybe using an extra large packet.  Unfortunately I've found that my PL1200s continue to misbehave unless I ping once every second ... though fortunately I can use the standard 32 byte payload.

YMMV,

George