WakeMeOnLan Provides Quick Compact Net Survey
Sometimes, accidental uses of software outstrip intended uses. Let me explain: my son’s PC is up in his bedroom. It’s about as far from my office as you can get in my house. Because I’m always tinkering with the PCs at home, I like to remote into them. But he’s away at school most weekdays, and out and about on weekends. So we’ve got his machine configured to go into deep sleep (S3/S5) while he’s not using it. Thus, I found myself learning how to enable the Magic Packet for Wake-On-LAN (WOL) so I can start that machine up from my office, and then get an RDP session going. In researching the topic, I stumbled across Nir Sofer/Nirsoft’s excellent WakeMeOnLan utility. In using that utility I realized it shows a list of all active IP addresses on the LAN, which makes it superior as a simple LAN scanner as well. Not only will it let me do what I want, WakeMeOnLan provides quick compact net survey. Here’s what that looks like:
Not only does it offer remote wake-up/shutdown, it also shows every device on the LAN (including our Alexa, printers, and even my otherwise unlabeled WAP). Good stuff!
[Click image for full-sized view.]
Why WakeMeOnLan Provides Quick Compact Net Survey Is a Good Thing
I’ve tried plenty of other LAN survey tools. But most of them list the entire address range from 0 to 254 with a bunch of empty entries when no device is mapped to an open IP address. WakeMeOnLan shows only occupied addresses, and thus also, shows me only what I want to see. Because I use DHCP device addresses will occasionally change. That makes this tool especially helpful when that happens to one or more of my network-attached printers, because that means I have to use the new IP address to resolve driver issues.
Others may find this tool likewise helpful and informative. Like most of Sofer’s utilties, it’s quick, capable, and easy to use. Check it out!