Saturday, August 30, 2008

Access Your Computer Anytime and Save Energy with Wake-on-LAN

You want access to your home computer wherever you are, whatever you're doing, whether that's via a remote desktop connection, SSH, FTP, web interface, or any other remote access you've set up. The catch is, you don't like throwing money away to an always-on system. Luckily you can have your digital cake and eat it, too, and today I'll show you how to boot and shut down your system remotely so that it's ready for you when you need it and it's not wasting energy when you don't.

The cornerstone of this setup is a feature available to almost all newer computers known as Wake-on-LAN (or WOL), which—as the name suggests—turns on your PC through your local network. Wake-on-LAN is a breeze to set up and use on your local network, and with a little legwork you can set it up so you can wake your computer away from your home network, as well.

First I'll show you how to enable Wake-on-LAN on your computer, starting with enabling the feature in the BIOS and finishing by choosing the correct system settings. Then I'll show you several methods you can use to wake your computer using this feature, from waking your computer through your browser to different applications made specifically for this purpose.

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