protecting against WiFi loss

[Eric S. Johansson]

I have a laptop which wants to power down on a regular basis and as a 
result, the WiFi network connection goes away.  originally I was 
thinking about using screen to protect my connections but what screen 
doesn't do is protect my forwarded connections (IMAP, X11, etc.)  I also 
need to solve the problem of resizing the terminal emulator windows, 
completely transparent pipe to the other end (i.e. no special characters 
intercepted), and probably a few other things I can't think of right now.

I think it is best summed up as I am trying to preserve state about a 
connection and the application running on the connection with the end 
goal of restoring that state should the connection be broken.

am I better off sticking with screen and ignoring X% of its features or 
starting over again?

many thanks

--- eric