Wake on LAN

Wake on LAN (WoL) is an Ethernet computer networking standard that allows a computer to be turned on or woken up by a network message. The message is sent by a program executed on the router on the same local area network.

This special network message is called the magic packet and it contains the MAC address of the destination computer. The listening computer waits for a magic packet addressed to it and then initiates system wake up.

Wake on LAN usually needs to be enabled in the Power Management section of a PC motherboard's BIOS setup utility. In addition, in order to get Wake on LAN to work it is sometimes required to enable this feature on the network interface card or on-board silicon device driver.