Wifi – How to boot up Windows Server 2003 remotely using Wake On LAN

internetvpnwake-on-lanwifiwindows-server-2003

I'm planning to get my Windows Server 2003 box to boot up using Wake on LAN (WOL), and have a few questions before diving in:

  1. Is WOL a feature of Windows, or of
    the BIOS and network card, or both?
  2. The Server 2003 box is connected to the
    switch/router via Ethernet, however,
    there are laptops that are connected
    only via wireless. Will these
    laptops be able to wake the server?
  3. Are there any specific tools I need
    to enable WOL. From what I
    understand, there should be
    something to configure on the
    server, and some utility on the
    client side to send the WOL packet.
  4. Is it possible to use WOL accross the internet, or accross a VPN (where the VPN is independant of Windows Server?
  5. The big question – how do I do it?

Best Answer

1) Wake up on LAN is a feature of the BIOS and network card:

Wake-on-LAN support is implemented on the motherboard (BIOS) of a computer and the network interface (firmware), and is consequently not dependent on the operating system (and NIC drivers) running on the hardware, although the operating system can sometimes control the Wake-on-LAN behaviour.

Source

2) The connection type of the machine sending the wake up signal shouldn't matter. As long as it is fully connected to the network they should be able to send the signal.

In case the computer being woken is communicating via Wi-Fi, the wake-up-packet can be sent via Wireless Multimedia Extensions (WMM)

3) There are tools to help you do this, though configuring the Server should just be a matter of setting up the BIOS correctly. The wake up is done by what Wikipedia calls a "Magic Packet" that contains the IP address of the server to be woken and the "wake-up" packet. This can be sent by any script/program that can access the network:

wolcmd 001122334455 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.255 7

(from the same Wikipedia page).

4) WOL does work over the Internet.

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