richsch wrote

My problem is that internet connectivity is lost periodically (daily or more often).

An EAP goes into provisioning/configuring state if the connection to the controller has been lost for whatever reason or if the EAP gets a new IP due to DHCP re-assignment (which is a connection loss). You could avoid the latter by using static IPs or static DHCP IP-mappings for EAPs, which is best for stationary devices.

Of course, connection to the LAN and the Internet is lost temporarily if the EAP goes int provisioning/configuring states. You can't disable this. You can avoid provisioning if you turn off the controller after the EAPs have been configured successfully, but you won't be able to use certain features which require a 24/7 connection to the controller such as meshing or other features (see the FAQ section for a list of features requiring a running controller).

If the Internet connection and the controller is availabe all the time, EAPs won't go into provisioning/connecting states. Our EAPs in stable networks run without any interruption. We have EAPs which run since hundreds of days without any interruption of connectivity:

richsch wrote

I have all APs with static IPs, so that's not an issue.  I don't really need a running controller; I don't use any such features.  Am I correct that I will disable the controller if I just close it on my Windows 7 computer, or do I need to do something else to keep it asleep?

Then you could try to stop the controller and check whether any EAP hangs up over time or loses Internet - does your ISP force a daily re-connect probably?

As for Windows controllers I don't know whether the controller really exits if you close the window, but I think there is - as always - a dialogue asking the user whether he intends to close or exit the application. Could be that if Windows goes to sleep mode applications stop responding. Just don't know, we do not use any Microsoft products here. Maybe some other forum user can answer this.