Using WOL (Wake On LAN)

I know that the WOL feature of a network card / BIOS is capable of turning on a computer. I have never used this function or seen it used, but I'm now interested in it, and google hasn't helped me a whole lot.

I have a farm of render slaves. These computers work in parallel with my main rendering machine, or act as servers to it.

I'd like to be able to turn these on remotely, and the WOL functions should be able to do this. I've not been able to find any information on WOL, which has shown any software control that I can use. I use terminal server / remote desktop to shut them down, which isn't too much hassle, but this can't start them up. I wish that remote desktop would power a machine up too, using WOL.

Has anybody here got any knowledge of using WOL? I'd love some help on this, it really would make my life easier.

Thanks for any help
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Zzub

I never used it personnaly, but I did a little search just for fun, and found out that you can use softwares to wake up computer that have the WOL enabled.

I found this one, wich is an evaluation version limited to 14 days. There's probably others out there.

www.youngzsoft.net...

Hope that helps.

On my network at home i have 5 computers all with WOL enabled and they all turn on when i flip the power switch on the router...simple.

Edit....you can also scare the living # out of some people this way.

[Edited on 17-5-2004 by dreamlandmafia]

If the network card is in a PCI slot and not an "onboard" card, then you might need to plug in a cable from the network card to a switch on the motherboard. It really depends on the motherboard and network card manufacturer. Just something to check into.

Thanks for the replies, guys. I'm using your info to look deeper into this. I'll let you know what I eventually find. I'll give that software a go.

Thanks again.