As I was looking through the DD-WRT Linux distribution capabilities I have seen an interesting protocol named Wake on LAN, allowing one to power up a device remotely.

Basically, for implementation, you have to configure the BIOS on the PC (usually in Power Management section) to support it. After that, your network card will remain active even after you power off the PC, waiting in a low-power state for a “magic packet” to turn it back on. I managed to implement it in a lab and it’s really nice to have full control over configuring a host PC from turn on to shut down. And in a lab with 45 PC’s.. it kind of helps .

I’ve played a little with an embedded ARM device with Linux, and cross-compiled the program <here> for use with the command line. The script that fires it lies <here>. I apologise for not having around the latest version at the time writing this. It looks like this:

WOL_screen

You can look on the web for more information about WOL (it’s very well documented).

Good luck!

DD

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