A Magic Packet is a broadcast frame with 6 bytes of ones (FF FF FF FF FF FF) followed by sixteen repetitions of the target systems Mac address. Magic Packets can be sent as a broadcast packet of any network- and transport-layer protocol. The Mac supports Wake on LAN and therefore a sleeping Mac can be brought to life using a magic packet. There are GUI wrappers that allow you to use Magic Packets, such as WOL, Nudge, etc. Just search for Magic Packet or Wake On LAN on Version Tracker and I’m sure you’ll find plenty…
These sometimes work for Windowz too, provided Wake on LAN support has been enabled.
PS – After a response I got, I feel the need to point out that you shouldn’t use Wake on LAN as a substitute for disabling sleep on a Mac OS X Server. Server’s should pretty much never go to sleep. Not sure why that was confusing but it’s now hopefully been sorted out (if not then please find another web site to read).
