Documentation forSolarWinds

Wake on LAN tool

With the Wake on LAN tool in ETS for the Desktop, you can power on a PC remotely. This is accomplished by the generation of a "magic packet" to remotely power on PCs attached to networks. When the remote network adapter hears a magic packet created for the unique MAC address of the device, the network adapter alerts the computer to power on. If Wake on LAN has been enabled in the BIOS settings, the system powers on as if the power button had been pressed.

When the device shuts down, the network interface card (NIC) is still receiving power, and listening on the network for a magic packet to arrive.

Prerequisites

To use the Wake on LAN tool, you first need to ensure your PC is configured to accept a Wake on LAN remote command. You must also identify the IP address and MAC address of the remote device. The MAC Address and IP address can be determined by opening a command prompt and typing the command ipconfig /all or on older system by typing the command winipcfg. You must use the correct target MAC address and IP address to be able to remotely locate and turn on a specific computer.

Open the Wake on LAN tool

  • To launch the tool from the Toolset Launch Pad, locate the Wake on LAN tool and click Launch.

  • You can add the tool to a tab in the Workspace Studio, and access it from there.

  • To launch the tool from the Windows Start menu:

    1. Click Start > All > SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset.

    2. Right-click Wake on LAN tool, click More, and click Run as administrator.

Wake a remote computer

You can wake a laptop only when it is plugged in to a charger.

  1. Enter the MAC address and IP address of the device you want to wake.

  2. Click Wake Up PC.

    The Wake on LAN tool sends a series of magic packets to the target PC in an attempt to power on the device.

  3. In the dialog box indicating the packets were sent, click OK.

Modify Wake on LAN settings

  1. Click File > Settings.

  2. On the Network Settings tab, specify the number of retries per packet to send, and the duration between each packet.

    These parameters are used to send the “magic packet” to power on the remote PC. If you are attempting to wake up a very remote PC (over 14 hops away), you may find it necessary to increase the number of retries as well as the inter-packet delay.

  3. On the Auto-Calc Broadcast Addresses tab, adjust the slider bar to select the mask for your network.

  4. On the Auto-Monitor tab, deselect the Enable option if you want to disable the Auto-Monitor feature that automatically notifies you when the remote PC finishes its Boot-up procedure.

  5. Click OK.

Configure your computer to support Wake on LAN

On many computers, Wake on LAN is disabled by default. The procedure to enable Wake on LAN is different for each computer manufacturer.

Enable Wake on LAN support in the BIOS

  1. Enter the BIOS settings screen during the computer power-on self-test.

    To enter the BIOS settings, press the F1, INS, or DEL key during the boot sequence, depending on your computer manufacturer instructions.

  2. Within the BIOS screen, navigate to the Power Settings.

  3. Within the Power Settings screen look for settings related to Power Up Control, and then enable settings related to Power Up on PCI card, LAN, or Network.

  4. Save, and then exit the BIOS settings.

Enable Wake on LAN support in Windows

Some Windows operating system drivers can enable the Wake on LAN features of network adapters without accessing the BIOS settings.

  1. Open the network adapter properties.

  2. Click Power Management, and then select Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby.

Computers with an older PCI bus

Some computers with an older PCI bus will not respond to a Wake Up signal via the PCI bus. For Wake on LAN to work on these computers, a WoL cable must be installed between the network card and the motherboard. Because this requires opening the computer case, we recommend contacting your PC manufacturer for specific instructions.

Enable directed broadcasts on a network

To send Wake on LAN packets from remote networks, the routers must be configured to direct broadcasts. This must be done for two reasons:

  • The PC is asleep, so it does not have an IP address and will not respond to ARPs from the router so only a local subnet IP broadcast packet is going be transmitted on the segment without an ARP.

  • If there is a layer two switch between the router and the PC, which is true for most networks, the switch does not know which port the PC is physically connected to. Only a layer two broadcast packet will be sent out all switch ports. All IP broadcast packets are addressed to the broadcast MAC address.

A Cisco router has IP broadcast packets enabled by default. If IP broadcast packets have been disabled, the interface configuration will have the line no ip directed-broadcast. If IP broadcasts are enabled, the line no ip directed-broadcast will not be present.