iPhone Wake On LAN

Probably it is not your case, but I have a Linux Media Center computer in my living room with Mythbuntu installed, that makes me really happy. So far, this has been pretty much my main passion... until I got my really nice iPod Touch!

Here you are listening to a happy owner of an iPod Touch 2nd generation. Since I bought it, I've been trying to do lots of geeky stuff. What can I say? I really enjoy this, it's my quality time! I hope that you find this article much more interesting than my wife does!!!

So one of this geeky stuff was: wouldn't it be nice to turn on my living room computer from my iPod Touch???

That's right. Everything can be accomplished by an Ethernet computer networking standard that allows a computer to be turned on (or woken up) by a network message, that is called Wake-on-LAN, or in short, WoL. Since this is an Ethernet standard, it will ONLY work on your ethernet card (no, it doesn't work on wireless cards attached to your pc).

The support for Wake-on-LAN is implemented on the motherboard of a computer and the network interface. It is not at all dependent on the Operating System you are running.

So, tell me, does your motherboard - network card support WoL?? It's a pretty diffused standard, so your computer should very likely support it too.

To do this, you must enter into the computer BIOS. Usually, you just need to press F1, or F2, or Del keys right after you turn on your pc. If the Operating System starts to load, then you have lost your chance, and need to restart again!

I have an IBM Netvista desktop computer, and for me I had to press F1. Once you are inside, start search for the menu item "Wake on LAN", or anything similar. In my IBM pc, it was under the "Automatic Power On" option.

As you can see from the picture, I just needed to change from Disabled to Automatic for Wake on LAN.

Now, all you need to do before going to your iPod is to find your computer MAC Address.

Let's say that the "hard" work is done. Now all you have to do is, install some iPhone Wake on LAN applications. I personally tested three of them: NetAwake, RemoteBoot and AWOL.

By the way: Did I mention that these applications are FREE?

This is a screenshot for the NetAwake Application. Very simple: Just add your computer name and MAC Address, and press the nice shiny button "Wake". :-)

Like the other applications, you can add as many pc's as you want. But this one has also a "help" button with the following items:

1. What is NetAwake?
2. How do I add a computer?
3. How do I enable Wake-on-LAN?
4. How do I find my computer's MAC address?
5. Why doesn't my computer wake up?

So there you have it, simple. And if you want, you also get the help.

AWOL requires a little bit more of information about your network. As every Wake-on-LAN application you need the MAC Address for the remote pc, but here you also need to put the Broadcast address and Port.

The Broadcast address is the last address of your network. So for example, if your IP address is 192.168.1.22, then the broadcast address for your network is 192.168.1.255.

For the port, you'll just have to try. According to the standard, the "magic packet" is always sent to ports 0, 7 or 9. So just try those, and it should work.

And the last one is RemoteBoot. As you can see from the image, here you also need to put the extra information.

You can save on your list up to 5 computers. Something interesting about this application is that you can group computers, and you can start all the computers from the same group at once.

A little help is also found on the usual "i" button.

If you own a MythTV set-top box, then you might want to take a look at my other lenses about Using Your iPhone as a MythTV Remote! or Customizing Lirc for Mplayer and MythTV

Or if you own an iPod Touch, check my other article about How To Receive Calls on your iPod Touch!