How to Setup and Use Wake-On-LAN Across a Company Network?

How to Setup and Use Wake-On-LAN Across a Company Network

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You planned to run tests or install latest updates on the desktop of that guy from the marketing team, who's sent you three reminders today regarding the problems with his computer, but then he turned it off before leaving the office for an outside meeting. What are your going to tell him and your boss tomorrow morning? Fortunately, the Wake-on-LAN technology is here to help you in such situations and turn on computers remotely when you need to get access to them.

What is Wake-on-LAN and how does it work?

Wake-on-LAN (also referred as WOL and Wake on LAN) is a networking standard implemented by the modern computer hardware. It allows waking up computers connected to the Ethernet network by sending them a special network packet. It is a standard for modern hardware, and, in most cases, it works independently of the software platform, so as far as you have a compatible motherboard, network card and power supply, you can use it on Windows, Linux, Mac and other platforms.

In order to wake up a remote computer, you need to send a so-called magic packet to it. This packet contains the computer's MAC address to be able to identify the target. The magic packet is distributed to all computers in the local network though a broadcast and is processed by the computer that detects its own MAC address in the packet. To enable operation of this technology, the computer must not be powered off, because its network card and motherboard should receive and process the network packets. You may shut the computer down to switch it into the low-power mode and keep only the required components running.

How to setup WOL

Hardware and software configuration is a required step to enable Wake-on-LAN operation on a computer. First of all, you have to enter the BIOS settings and enable WOL there. You can refer to the motherboard documentation in order to have detailed instructions on that. On Windows computers, you should also go to the network card properties in the Device Manager and enable wake-up by a magic packet there. The particular configuration steps may vary for different network cards, and checking hardware documentation makes sense if you have problems with the configuration.

How to initiate Wake-on-LAN

Despite the fact that WOL is one of the most frequently used remote operations, there is lack of standard support in the operation systems. In particular, Windows doesn't provide a standard Wake-on-LAN utility. Still, there are a number of utilities from third-party vendors. Some of them are free, some are commercial, but all of them can be classified as either command-line or GUI utilities. Command-line WOL tools require that you enter the MAC address and the IP address of a remote computer. Most of GUI utilities require that you enter the same information thorough a visual interface. Such tools are good enough if you need to wake up only one and always the same computer. You can check its MAC and IP addresses once and then execute Wake-on-LAN every time with the same parameters. However, these tools are useless in a corporate environment where you need to wake up different or multiple computers.

An automatic detection of MAC addresses and the ability to wake up multiple computers at a time are the most important and wanted features of a WOL utility to be used in a corporate environment. All of these features are available in the free Wake on LAN tool with GUI designed for corporate networks. The free version operates under Windows and allows waking up multiple computers on demand. The commercial version offers an extended functionality and includes the WOL scheduling features.

Igor Vinnykov is a technical author writing about Windows administration. He works for a technology company where he helps system administrators to setup and use Wake-on-LAN utility in their networks.

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