A method and system for managing power consumption in a portable computing device having a network interface module is presented. A power management module receives inputs from other modules and determines when the network interface module is to be put in a doze state for a predetermined number of beacon intervals to conserve power consumption in the network interface module. The network interface module in a device that is associated with a network is put in the doze state after an event has occurred including when a scan has been performed, after a delayed sleep timer has expired, and after a beacon transmission has been completed and no traffic is buffered for the device. The delayed sleep time is set based on the estimated round trip time of a packet.