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I know this really doesn’t belong here but software discussion has disappeared so here I am!
I would like to try to get WOL working for my home pc (now that I have the new machine I want to re purpose the other as a server). I don’t know if the functionality I desire is possible, but I want the pc to wake on pretty much any network traffic that is directed to it. I know the basics of WOL but I am by no means an expert.
The board is an evga 750i which does support WOL. Can anyone provide some insight as to the functionality I desire (whether or not it is even possible) or perhaps some information about how to get it configured. I dabbled with some tutorials on the web but as of right now I can only wake it up with a magic packet and only if it is shut down (sleep mode doesn’t wake up).
Thanks,
Rob
You can’t get a PC to wake on literally any network traffic as that’s not what wake on LAN is designed to do. If it were to wake the machine up when receiving any packet the PC would be asleep for less than a second before being woken up by a broadcast frame or a keepalive frame for a TCP connection. The only way to wake a computer up is by sending a “magic packet” which is a frame that contains a broadcast packet, which instructs routers and switches to send to all LAN ports on the local subnet, and 16 repetitions of the target computer’s MAC address. You’ll need a “server” program to activate this functionality on the target computer and a “client” program to craft the packet needed to wake it up. Windows7 has the “server” functionality built in and there are several websites and utilities you can use to wake it up remotely.
A decent guide:
http://windows7-issues.blogspot.com/2011/03/wake-on-lan-wol-for-windows-7-made-easy.html
Ninja add: It looks like Win7 can wake on any packet, I highly recommend you don’t do this. Your computer will wake up at random times.
I mean, I wouldn’t want it to wake on EVERYTHING. I’d want it to wake for a few protocols, though (80, 443, 23, 3389, and maybe others that I can’t think of). That seems to be the ideal behavior for me. I wouldn’t want the wake the PC every time it was randomly sniffed, just for designated traffic.
MasterP said:
You can’t get a PC to wake on literally any network traffic as that’s not what wake on LAN is designed to do. If it were to wake the machine up when receiving any packet the PC would be asleep for less than a second before being woken up by a broadcast frame or a keepalive frame for a TCP connection. The only way to wake a computer up is by sending a “magic packet” which is a frame that contains a broadcast packet, which instructs routers and switches to send to all LAN ports on the local subnet, and 16 repetitions of the target computer’s MAC address. You’ll need a “server” program to activate this functionality on the target computer and a “client” program to craft the packet needed to wake it up. Windows7 has the “server” functionality built in and there are several websites and utilities you can use to wake it up remotely.
A decent guide:
http://windows7-issues.blogspot.com/2011/03/wake-on-lan-wol-for-windows-7-made-easy.html
Ninja add: It looks like Win7 can wake on any packet, I highly recommend you don’t do this. Your computer will wake up at random times.
AFAIK, there is no way to make it wake up for specific protocols. When WOL is activated, the network adapter waits for a specific frame sent to a specific port. There’s not a whole lot of flexibility since the actual waiting functionality is firmware based.
MasterP said:
AFAIK, there is no way to make it wake up for specific protocols. When WOL is activated, the network adapter waits for a specific frame sent to a specific port. There’s not a whole lot of flexibility since the actual waiting functionality is firmware based.
I mean, if it happens at a layer above the NIC wouldn’t it work? For instance, if the router was to handle the WOL under certain scenarios it would possibly work?
I have to look into ww-drt or tomato and see if either does some fun WOL stuff. My friend has an Apple Airport and says that it wakes his server on web traffic. Appealing, but not $180 worth of appealing. Because his Apple product can do it, though, it makes have a bigger drive to get it done for a quarter of the cost.
The NIC itself can only do it for what the firmware is programmed for. For most consumer-grade NICs, that’s going to be a magic packet. It really has nothing to do with networking layers as the WOL-enabled NIC would be using layers layers 1-3 just like the router.
Apple recently expanded the WOL functionality in Snow Leopard to allow the OS to hand off Bonjour services to the Apple Airports. This is what your friend is talking about. Basically OSX tells the router that it’s going into WOL mode and the router memorizes what services that computer was making available and continues to broadcast them as available. When another computer wishes to use one of the services, the Airport sends a magic packet to the computer, waits X seconds, and then forwards along the service request to the computer. This is something that has to be made available at the software level and the router has to support it. AFAIK Windows 7 doesn’t support anything like this and I don’t imagine custom router firmware will either. Now that there’s a calling for it they might add the feature but if the OS doesn’t communicate the desire to use the feature there’s not much point.
And yeah, there’s so much else that Apple Airports either can’t do or suck at doing that they aren’t worth getting. I don’t even do remote support for them, they’re so touchy feely that without sitting down in front of one there’s no way to tell what’s wrong. And the average person using one, IE a Mac tard/fanboy, isn’t the type of person that makes remote support fun and/or easy.
I was actually just coming here to post about the airports/snow leopard. Apple calls it “wake on demand”. It is one of the big advantages to control both pieces of hardware (router and server). It is a pretty awesome behavior. I want to see if dd-wrt or tomato supports a similar functionality.
Conceptually, it isn’t that hard. In my head, you register certain services with the router for a given host. The router obviously has to do a few more intelligent things (remember the hosts mac/ip, keep track of the servers state). I feel like conceptually it isn’t the hardest task to make happen.
Obviously, apples behavior is ideal. I have never configured an apple server, but I can imagine it’s as simple as…”Yes, I want an ftp site. Yes, I want WOL. Yes, I want my router to manage this for me”. I would think the server communicates this stuff to the router and it is all instantly configured for you. Seems very Apple-y.
To be fair, Windows Server 2008 is just as simple. Also, prior to this change, Apple Airports would, and still might, erase an IP/MAC address once the computer has been inactive for 10-15 minutes whereas even vanilla Linksys firmware keeps that information in the routing table until the DHCP lease expires, or permanently if you use DHCP reservation.
Again, without direct support from Windows, functionality like this is going to be difficult to program into the router. The router won’t automatically know if the computer is sleeping or shut down and the only way for it to be able to tell the difference is by sending a magic packet and seeing if the computer wakes up, obviously not what you want. The only real alternative to direct OS support is to tell the router to always assume that your computer is sleeping and has X services available, again not really ideal because a powered down computer will still have its services advertised to the network.
As an update, DD-wrt has a script that checks a log file for connections to an ip on a port, checks if the machine is up, and if not wakes it. AWESOME. I bought a router and loaded dd-wrt on it.
The sad news: my evga 750i doesn’t seem to support wake on lan for sleep. It will wake on lan when shut down fully, but when it is sleeping it doesn’t accept the magic packet.
I’m debating buying a pci nic and hoping that it works in sleep mode. I’m really doubting that it would, but the lack of WOL functionality is making my router purchase a waste!
POO on the 750i’s lack of support.
Just curious but why do you want wake on lan? What type of traffic are you trying to make your computer detect to wake on?
I plan on making my old pc a server of sorts. I want to make it host web, files, have the ability to rdp into it to get onto my home network, etc. I didn’t want to have to manually send a magic packet each time I wanted to use the computer. My solution was dd-wrt with a script that handles the wake ups.
I should add that this server wouldn’t be used *that* frequently which seems to make it a good WOL candidate for me. It normally draws like 300watts so I would love to reduce that.
MasterP said:
You could always rebuild it with an Intel Atom. My HTPC/fileserver uses 35-45 watts.
That’s pretty *edited* low! I don’t have too much money to sink in right now (i’m paying off student loans as rapidly as possible). How much was it?
I think it was around $350, that was for case, motherboard with integrated cpu/vga, RAM, fans. Re-used hard drives.
The price should have come down considerably since then. If you don’t care about watching HD movies or playing games you can get a dualcore atom motherboard with intel VGA for $75 or so. Most come with 2 SATA ports but you can get up to 6.
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