Wake on LAN
lastmod 2025-11-10created 2015-03-266 edits
Wake-on-LAN (WOL) is an Ethernet computer networking standard that turns a computer on or wakes it from sleep mode by sending a network message.
The message is usually sent by a program running on another computer on the same local area network (LAN). It is also possible to initiate the message from another network using subnet directed broadcasts or a WOL gateway service. As English terms, it is also called wake on WAN, remote wake-up, power on by LAN, power up by LAN, resume by LAN, resume on LAN, or wake up on LAN. To wake a computer by communicating over Wi-Fi, a supplementary standard called WoWLAN (Wake on Wireless LAN) must be used.
The WOL and WoWLAN standards are sometimes supplemented by vendors that provide protocol-transparent on-demand services, for example the wake-on-demand (Sleep Proxy) feature of Apple Bonjour.
See also
- Multi-booting
- Boot disk
- Bootkit
- Comparison of boot loaders
- Linux startup process
- Macintosh startup
- Microreboot
- Multi boot
- Network booting
- RedBoot
- Self-booting disk
- Windows startup process
- iVentoy - A tool for booting & installing an OS over the network
Favorite site
- Wake-on-LAN - Wikipedia
- KLDP: Wake on LAN (WOL)
- [Recommended] Router WOL (Wake On Lan) setup guide : Danawa DPG (DPG gets me) - Explained well for beginners.
- Making a Linux home server sleep when idle and wake when needed | GeekNews
- [Original] Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand — the simple way | Daniel P. Gross
- Install Ubuntu on a device like a Raspberry Pi and make it wake up and run when needed, then sleep
- Runs only when requests such as SSH or Time Machine backups come in
- When there are no logged-in SSH sessions and no Time Machine backups in progress
- If more metrics were needed, would probably consider something like Circadian, the best known one