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on a device (iphone, mac, pc, etc.) i want to know if a pc (on the same lan and running windows) is

1) "on" (meaning powered on) and lan-connected with my device
2) on but the network cable is unplugged or the network card is disabled
3) "off" (that is powered off) but plugged to the lan (so i can wake it up with wol magic packet)
4) off and not plugged

i've already accomplished question #1 doing a ping command. is there a smarter way?
but the other points are all equals for my device's point of view: i can't communicate with target pc but i want to know why!

i believe that it's pretty much like logmein does. infact, it knows the power status of my pcs... but how?!

i looked for acpi status but, really, how can it be used programmatically and remotely?! hmm, seems it's not the way.
maybe there are some "magic packet" (like wol) to detect these status remotely?

could you to point me to the right way?

thanks

donlucacorleone
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1 Answers1

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According to the LogMeIn FAQ, in response to the question "Why does my computer show as Offline?", the response is:

The LogMeIn service must be running on the computer you want to control.

In other words, the LogMeIn service depends on software running on that computer, and that software is in touch with the central LogMeIn servers at all times.

If the service is stopped, or the computer is turned off, the servers only knows that the software is not currently able to talk to the server. For all it knows, the internet connection the machine is behind is down.

In any case, there's nothing you can do remotely without the help of software on that computer, so you need to factor that into the time needed to create such a program; ie. you need to make that extra piece of software that sits on the computer as well.

Lasse V. Karlsen
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  • ok, it sounds good. and what about the difference between the state "wake up" and "offline" (that is you cannot wake up your pc)? in that case logmein knows that the pc can be reached by a wol packet or not. referring to my post, the option 1 is made by logmein service: OK! options 2 and 4 are the same for logmein, isn't it? but logmein knows the difference status between 2 (or 4) and 3. how can i do that? – donlucacorleone May 05 '11 at 12:30
  • Usually a WOL packet can only be sent by a different computer on the same network, so not over the internet. – Lasse V. Karlsen May 05 '11 at 12:54
  • i'm not sure... logmein works via internet and can switch on your pc sending a wol packet. the question is: how it could determine if your pc is "wakeable"? for now i'm not interesting in lan or wan and we may assume we are always on a lan scenario for the sake of semplicity – donlucacorleone May 05 '11 at 13:13