Tip: Wake on LAN/Magic Packet information collection and check list

Hello,

very often i’ve been asked related to Wake On LAN and mostly people are not getting it to work. Please note: WoL/Magic Packet’s is a technology created by AMD and not IGEL!

Setting up WoL mostly requires good networking skills and the right infrastructure, so you have to figure this out: There is no “general” tip or configuration at all!

Here are some good 3rd Party information sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN (english)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_On_LAN (german)
http://support.amd.com/us/Embedded_TechDocs/20213.pdf (AMD Tech Specs for Wake on LAN)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb932199.aspx ( Troubelshooting WoL-Microsoft Technet)

Checklist for WoL:
1) In general make sure that WoL/Magic Packet’s are supported by “ALL” of your network devices like routers and switches.
2) Do not hard power off your devices (power disconnect), by definition WoL will not wake up a device after a hard power off!
3) WoL do not work thru WiFi (WoL is pre-WiFi time), for VM’s and/or devices with an Intel 10GB network card (not supported by Intel)!
4) Play around with the Wake on LAN configuration in the IGEL UMS Administrator or for Universal Desktop LX/OS you can also perform some configuration task thru System->Registry->network.interfaces.ethernet.device0.wol. Attention: Make sure what you’re configuring, otherwise the device will be powered on very often… 😉
5) Make sure the ARP cache/table (for Switches/Routers)  is large enough, typical symptom: Wake on Lan is working for a few hours after the device is (soft-) switched off, then it doesn’t work anymore from one second to an other. Cheap retail switches mostly provide a very limited ARP cache and/or high end switches needs to be configured in the right way to handle this.

Dealing with Wake on Lan is tricky and you should figure out which component’s are creating the issue but in 99,99999% it’s not the (IGEL) end device!

Cheers
Michael