Intelligent NIC downloads while host PC sleeps

“According to the team of six researchers, who are reportedly
scheduled to present Somniloquy research and prototypes at next
month’s USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and
Implementation in San Diego, 67 percent of enterprise desktop PCs
remain powered on outside work hours, and the average residential
computer is on approximately 34 percent of the time. Enterprise PCs
are often left on for remote access, while home PCs are left on for
quick availability, file sharing/downloading, instant messaging,
and email, the researchers say.

“As developer Yuvraj Agarwal and his colleagues point out, most
desktops and laptops commonly feature an energy-saving S3 “sleep”
(suspend-to-RAM) mode, but they cannot respond to remote network
events while they are in this state. And, while WOL (wake-on-LAN)
technology has been touted as one solution to this problem, it
typically does not work remotely because of firewalls, because of
the need to know in advance when a system is sleeping, and because
of the need to know the MAC address of the sleeping PC.”

Complete
Story