This question was spurred by discovering the Acer M670G seems not have an Wake-on-LAN (WoL) settings in the BIOS and in general, wondering whether WoL is controlled by the BIOS/NIC or the OS.
One of my colleagues, “A” was discussing on the Wake-on-LAN (WoL) functionality and mention that WOL depends on the motherboard and the BIOS settings.
Another colleague, “B” begs to differ. Colleague “B” think that if you have purchased and plugged in a PCI network card, the WoL functionality will then depend on the operating system as well as if the new internal PCI network card support WoL or not.
So should one say that the WoL functionality depends on the motherboard and the BIOS if the network card is embedded into the motherboard?
Also, can one assume that if one plugs in an internal PCI Network card onto the motherboard—regardless if the motherboard has existing embedded network card or not—the WoL functionality will now depend on the installed operating system and whether the network card has WoL functionality?
Best Answer
Colleague “A” is 100% correct: Wake-on-LAN (WoL) functionality dependent on the motherboard and related BIOS settings. The NIC should be able to support WoL and the BIOS needs to be able to make sense of the NIC saying, “Hey! This is your NIC and my WoL has been triggered! Do you care do do something with this info, motherboard?”
As explained very clearly on Wikipedia, Wake-on-LAN comes from the NIC’s firmware and is paid attention to by motherboards that respect WOL; bold emphasis is mine:
And with more detail of how the BIOS plays into the whole setup; again bold emphasis is mine:
And even more details from “How-To Geek Explains: What is Wake-on-LAN and How Do I Enable It?”; yet again bold emphasis is mine:
And on many modern systems, there is no explicit WoL setting in the BIOS with the functionality either given a different name or buried under other power settings as explained in this Lifehacker post: