As I mentioned previously, I have my PowerMac on the network, but in the basement.  And like any energy and environment conscious person, I keep the power settings on this machine to put it to sleep after a time.  So I'm upstairs and I need to access a file on my Mac, in the basement.  But it won't respond, because of course it's asleep, in the basement.  Did I mention my Mac is in the basement?  And when it's sleeping, and I just want one file, well even though I do need the exercise, who wants to run downstairs to wake up the Mac just for 1 file?

Enter a free shoe leather saving application for Windows XP called Wake On Lan.  I found a link for this application along with a rather good tutorial on macosxhints.com after a brief search.  Rather than repeat what is written here I'd recommend you just check out their tutorial.  To the right is a screen shot showing all of the info filled in.  The author recommends using Port Number 7, but further research revealed that most networks automatically reserve Port 9 for the type of packets this application broadcasts.  Either port seems to work actually.

When I first began testing it I ran into a curious problem that neither the tutorial nor the application author's web site mention.  The Mac would wake up, but within about 5 seconds it was sleeping again.  After some investigation I discovered when it woke up it was waiting for a password, and when it didn't get one it promptly went back to sleep.  So, if you have your Mac set to require a password to come out of sleep or screensaver this really won't help you much until you change that setting.

Next Installment: What if my PC is asleep?

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