To conserve energy, components in mobile devices have to transition less frequently between "active" and "sleep" modes, and to sleep for longer intervals. In accordance with at least one preferred embodiment of the present invention, there is broadly contemplated herein an approach for remote discovery of wireless client and access point configurations, especially those settings associated with the power consumption of the client's wireless interface. Methods contemplated in the preferred embodiment use packet probing techniques to determine the client and access point configurations remotely. The probing techniques include sending packets to the client device, over the wireless LAN, at intervals calculated using data publicly available on the wireless LAN technology in use and results of previous packet probing measurements. Measurements from several packet probes and methods for statistical data processing are used to make a determination.