Wake On LAN (Remotely power on a computer)

Published on July 29, 2009 in Tools. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Have you ever wondered how you could power on a computer remotely?

Well, with this program you can do it!

C:\>wol

Wake-On-Lan (WOL) Tool v1.0 by NeoEGM

http://www.neoegm.com/software/wake-on-lan/

-------------------------------------------

Usage: wol 

Wakes the computer with the specified MAC address.

Accepted MAC address formats: 01-4B-8E-00-52-A1
                              01-4b-8e-00-52-a1
                              01:4B:8E:00:52:A1
                              01:4b:8e:00:52:a1
                              014B.8E00.52A1
                              014b.8e00.52a1
                              014b8e0052a1
                              014B8E0052A1

You have to configure the remote computer (the one which will be powered on) to support the Wake-On-LAN feature. This is done in the CMOS settings looking for the “Power/ACPI” settings or something like that.

Then, you have to find out the MAC Address (sometimes called “Physical Address”) of the network adapter connected to the LAN. On Windows it’s done doing this from the console:

C:\>ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

   Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : mypc1
   Primary Dns Suffix  . . . . . . . :
   Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown
   IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Marvell Yukon 88E8056
PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller
   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-1F-C2-14-B3-F4
   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
   IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.254
   DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.254

In this case, it’s “00-1F-C2-14-B3-F4″, so the tool can be used like this:

C:\>wol 00-1F-C2-14-B3-F4

Wake-On-Lan (WOL) Tool v1.0 by NeoEGM

http://www.neoegm.com/software/wake-on-lan/

-------------------------------------------

Wake-up packet sent to MAC address 00-1F-C2-14-B3-F4.

There are some restrictions that apply to the hardware, but a summary may be: the motherboard must support the “Wake-On-Lan (WOL)” feature and the NIC (network adapter) must have a wire called with that name connected to the motherboard. If the motherboard of the computer you want to power on is not so old and has an integrated (on-board) Ethernet card, then it’ll probably work.

GNU GPL v3 WakeOnLan is licensed under the GNU GPL v3 (attached)…

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2 Responses to “Wake On LAN (Remotely power on a computer)”

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  • hrum
    Monday August 17th, 2009 at 11:55 pm

    I’m using Network Shutdown Tool on my domain. It’s program can wake up, reboot, sutdown multiple computers simultaneously.

    • NeoEGM
      Tuesday August 18th, 2009 at 12:05 am

      Alright, but the software you’re publicizing is a paid software.

      This one is freeware and open source. And you can easily write batch jobs which power on multiple computers. To power them off or reboot them, you can use the “shutdown” command in the same way if they are running Windows, otherwise, you can use ssh.

      Thanks anyway.

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