Compaq Computer Corporation, Inc.

Larry Huppert

Simoni Ben-Michael

Michael Ben-Nun

Thomas J Schmidt

A method and related apparatus enables one station on a local area network (LAN) 24 to securely wake up another station on the LAN 24 although the stations may be physically remote from each other. A workstation 12, acting as a remote management console, generates a secure wake-up packet 42 intended for a desktop computer 14 on the LAN 24. The desktop computer 14 is operating in a sleep state. The data section of the secure wake-up packet has a particular sequence of data including a synchronization sequence 46, a MAC address sequence 48 and a password sequence 50. The desktop computer 14 has a network interface 64 for detecting and processing secure wake-up packets 70 when that network interface 64 is operating in a remote access control mode. The network interface 64 verifies that MAC address sequence 48 corresponds to the MAC address of the desktop computer 14 and that the password sequence 50 has a predetermined relationship with a password required to wake up the desktop computer 14. The network interface 64 issues a wake-up signal to wake up the desktop computer 14 when a valid secure wake-up packet is processed.

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Sudbury, MA, United States of America

Larry Huppert