WOL works - switch light off

I have a Gigabyte motherboard with an Intel Pro 1000/CT adaptor built in. I
have tried everything to get WOL to work while the PC is suspended using
STR, but the adaptor light always switches off. However, I tried waking it
up remotely, and it did wake up.

I also noticed that the switch lights appeared to indicate that data was
going to/from this port (even though there was no link).

Does anybody know whether switches can send or receive data to ports that do
not have a link? I have a Netgear FS108.


cheers,

On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 11:15:54 +1000, "C3" <_> wrote:

>I have a Gigabyte motherboard with an Intel Pro 1000/CT adaptor built in. I
>have tried everything to get WOL to work while the PC is suspended using
>STR, but the adaptor light always switches off. However, I tried waking it
>up remotely, and it did wake up.
>
>I also noticed that the switch lights appeared to indicate that data was
>going to/from this port (even though there was no link).
>
>Does anybody know whether switches can send or receive data to ports that do
>not have a link? I have a Netgear FS108.

The PHY has to remain alive for WOL to work, and all you need to lite the link
and activity lights are a functional PHY. Thus the switch at the other end of
the wire presumes a functional device is connected and will indeed toss
packets at the link. Those packets can consist of pretty much any normal
traffic on a LAN, including discovery, broadcast, etc.

My latest server system design has a motherboard-mounted PHY connected to a
socketed Agilent eKVM (for remote maintenance), and even with that socket
utterly empty the LEDs for the link remain quite busy if there's a cable
attached to a switch, for while there's no way for the system to send packets
to the switch, there's more than enough "stuff" active for the switch to send
packets to the system.

In short, what you're seeing is totally normal....

/daytripper