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Can software respond to a Wake-on-Lan packet, or does it get filtered out by the NIC and/or OS?

My PC receives a Wake-on-Lan packet when one of my devices can't connect to the service it's expecting. If the PC is off, the packet will cause the machine to boot up, as expected. Unfortunately, it's possible (and common) for a PC user to quit the service manually. This leaves the system in a bad state where the machine is on but the service isn't running.

This particular service (Steam Big Picture Mode) doesn't have a 'run as service' option, and doesn't provide any other hooks to start it remotely. I'd like to write some bootstrap code that listens for the WoL packet and launches the service.

I want to honor the user's request to close the service on the host, up until the point that the WoL request is received. Thus, I'd prefer not to write a process that just monitors the service health and re-starts it when it's closed.

Chris Casey
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  • Pressing the `Steam` button on the steam controller fires up Big Picture mode. So there should be something you probably can catch, like maybe a window message (with [Spy++](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa264396(v=vs.60).aspx)) or whatever bytes come from the USB dongle. – Maximilian Riegler Jul 07 '16 at 08:15
  • This works when Steam is running, but if Steam has been exited by a user, the client device (SteamLink) can't find the service. The user's controller won't have anywhere to send that signal. – Chris Casey Jul 07 '16 at 20:19

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