Decent WOL NIC?
-
I don't think I'd ever really need WOL but it would make me feel better…
Right now all of my add-in NICs do not support WOL (Intel Pro 1000 MT & PT dual & quad).
Looking for a decent NIC that supports WOL. Ideally a dual or quad that is comperable to the Intel Pro 1000 MT or PT NICs I'm using now.
Its not a big deal but right now the only NIC in each system that supports WOL is the mobo NIC. I'd rather not use that for a WAN port but in the event that I do something stupid and halt the system, etc. its a nice backup option to turn things back on. In the locations where I have a failover ISP I've been using the mobo NIC as that interface so I have access but its the secondary connection.
Most WOL NICs I've seen are pretty expensive.
-
Both units you refer to are documented as having WoL support.
-
Perhaps it is my motherboard then - which may not allow devices in USB/PCI/PCI-X/PCIe slots to wake the system?
I do see that it should be possible however when I power down my system and send a magic packet to the NIC it does not wake up the machine.
Is there something I'm doing wrong? I'm going to hop over to the Dell support forums and ask over there as well.
Generally this is Intel Pro 1000 MT or PT dual or quad NICs and they are all in Dell Precision 490 workstations.
thx for your reply.
-
@pf2.0nyc:
Perhaps it is my motherboard then - which may not allow devices in USB/PCI/PCI-X/PCIe slots to wake the system?
A few years back I bought some Intel 10/100 NICs which had a special cable to plug into a pin header on the motherboard. The cable was alleged to be for WOL. I guess WOL didn't use a standard PCI bus signal.
-
There is a standard to have WOL integrated into the PCI bus, so the cable is no longer required
-
There is a standard to have WOL integrated into the PCI bus, so the cable is no longer required
Thanks. I looked up the Wikipedia article on Wake on Lan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN) which says the WOL capability came into PCI 2.2. My NICs with WOL cable almost certainly pre date PCI 2.2.
The Wikipedia article says WOL may need to be enabled on Linux through Ethertool but doesn't discuss FreeBSD.
@pf2.0nyc:
I do see that it should be possible however when I power down my system and send a magic packet to the NIC it does not wake up the machine.
It might be worth doing a web search for FreeBSD WOL and reading the Wikipedia article for troubleshooting hints.