Enterprise Software

Set up S3 sleep state in Vista for significant power savings

Finding the MAC address via ipconfig /all

You can also run the command ipconfig /all from the command line to retrieve the MAC address and look for the entry for Physical Address.

A variety of utilities are available for sending the Magic Packet. If you're going to be waking the computer up only from within the network, you'll need the broadcast address for your local network. If you plan to wake the computer up from outside of your local LAN through the Internet, you'll need to configure your router to forward the Wake On LAN port (usually port 9 or port 7) on the external interface to the IP address that is the internal broadcast address. Not every router supports port forwarding to a broadcast address, so test this on your router before expecting it to work.

Because a broadcast address is used and the Magic Packet is keyed with the PC's MAC address, you can have multiple computers within the network set to go to sleep and selectively wake them up. You do not necessarily need to use the broadcast address if you can be assured that the PC will always have the same address (such as in a static IP address scheme or if the DHCP server keeps a reservation for that PC). But generally speaking, using the broadcast address makes the most sense.

Some free utilities to perform Wake On LAN are:
  • Depicus: A Wake On LAN utility written in .NET. There is also a Web-based version, which you can use on the company's Web site or download and install on your own Web site. Additionally, non-.NET versions are available, including a Macintosh version. Note: the Web site and the software will send to the broadcast for the network.
  • RemoteWakeup.com: A simple, Web-based Wake On LAN system.
  • wakeonlan: The wakeonlan Perl script lets you wake computers as well with the Magic Packet and will run on any computer with Perl installed.


Justin James is the Lead Architect for Conigent.