The first hurdle is that off computers don't really have IP addresses. This doesn't play well with WoL, which wants to send packets to computers that are off. Ethernet was designed to send data between computers that are on. This apparently lets you set the MAC address that your card listens for, effectively turning it into a private password. Don't quote me on this, but looking at the ethtool man page it looks like someone has "invented" SecureOn™ for MagicPacket™. a university), annoying people could keep waking your computer. You might have noticed a small flaw with MagicPacket™: Anyone on the network can see you MAC address, so if you are trying to use WoL on an untrusted local network (e.g. This is also the reason you need to put your MAC address into WoL tools so it can construct the MagicPacket™. Now, random packets won't annoyingly wake your computer. To fix this, someone invented MagicPacket™! By setting your card to MagicPacket™ mode, it will only wake the computer when it sees data containing your network card's MAC address repeated 6 times (as far as I remember). Seems kind of reasonable, but in reality it is useless because occasionally random packets flying over the network will wake your computer up for no reason. That is, whenever an ethernet frame (or maybe an IP packet I'm not 100% sure) is seen by the network card. When WoL was first created, you could set your network card to signal the BIOS to turn your computer on when there was any network activity. Obviously if your computer were actually completely off, then there's no way this can work, so when modern computers are turned "off", the ethernet card actually remains on, in a (hopefully) low power state, listening for WoL packets. So the whole point of WoL is to turn your computer on remotely using the network. Ok, there isn't much good information about this on the net, so here's my wisdom: How Wake-on-LAN works Motherboards with an embedded Ethernet controller which supports WoL do not need a cable. If the network interface is a plug-in card rather than being integrated into the motherboard, the card may need to be connected to the motherboard by a cable. Wake on LAN (WoL) support is implemented on the motherboard of a computer and the network interface, and as such, is not dependent on the operating system running on the hardware, although the operating system can sometimes control the WoL behaviour. Wikipedia has a good article on Wake On Lan But it is worth seeing if you have a slot for a Wake On Lan Chip or cableĪlso, as for saving energy, you need to obviously turn on your device! You need to have a router that can turn on devices based on a schedule or a wireless mobile or similar that you can send the instruction from - obviously though, you may just be better off turning the machine on via its power button! If you have an actual Network card, you may not be able to use it. The easiest way to start is simply, if you have an integrated NIC, look in the BIOS and see if it supports it. They can be configured so that when a special instruction is received, it can power up the machine. Basically, when your machine is plugged in, even turned off, some maintain some very basic functions such as the network card.
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