What is Wake On LAN?

[de8212]

Sorry, not sure if this is considered hardware or software. I've seen it advertised as a function of the motherboard just not sure what exactly it does????

de

 

[Strych9]

Remote wake-up. A computer can be transitioned from sleep mode to on over the network.

 

[Megatomic]

If your network card and bios support this function and you have it set up in bios, your computer will leave sleep power mode when it receives a signal from the NIC. This is often used when IT wants to defrag/update/back-up a PC that is in sleep mode. They don't have to personally bring the machine out of sleep saving them much time and effort.

 

[de8212]

OK, I think I get it.
This may be slightly unrelated but since my mobo has the Power ON by Keyboard feature, is there any way to actually turn it on remotely?
For example, I would like to set up an FTP server on my pc that I can access from work. I have done that before but my pc had to be running (I never tried it any other way).

 

[Tominator]

I believe it's 'Wake on Local Area Network.' When it senses activity on the LAN, the computer 'wakes up' by stopping all power saving feature that might be enabled. Then the computer is ready to use from another terminal so files and data may be accessed without delay.