WOLSharp

Interop helpers for sending Wake‑on‑LAN (WOL) magic packets to wake machines on your network.

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Why WOLSharp?

• Dead‑simple API — one call to broadcast a magic packet.
• .NET Standard 2.0 — works on .NET Framework 4.6.1+, .NET Core 2.0+, and modern .NET.

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Install

Get it on NuGet!

# Package Id
WOLSharp

# dotnet CLI
dotnet add package WOLSharp

# Package Manager
Install-Package WOLSharp

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Quick start

using System.Net.NetworkInformation;
using WOLSharp;

// Create a socket (will broadcast)
using var wol = new WOLSocket();

// Send using a string MAC (accepted: AA-BB-CC-DD-EE-FF, AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF, or AABBCCDDEEFF)
wol.Broadcast("01-23-45-67-89-AB");

// Or using PhysicalAddress
var mac = PhysicalAddress.Parse("0123456789AB");
wol.Broadcast(mac);

Heads‑up: WOL uses UDP broadcast (commonly port 9 or 7). Ensure your NIC/BIOS/UEFI and OS power settings allow Wake‑on‑LAN and that your network permits directed or global broadcast.

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What’s a magic packet?

A WOL magic packet is:

• 6 bytes of 0xFF
• followed by your 6‑byte MAC repeated 16 times

Total length: 102 bytes.

FF FF FF FF FF FF  <mac x16>

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Troubleshooting

• No wake?

  • Enable WOL in BIOS/UEFI and in the NIC’s driver settings ("Wake on Magic Packet").
  • Some systems only wake from S3/S4, not from full power‑off (S5).
  • On Windows, uncheck “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power” for the NIC if needed.

• Across subnets/VLANs: you may need a router that permits directed broadcast or a WOL relay/proxy.

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Notes

• WOL is unauthenticated by design. Don’t expose a “wake anything” endpoint to untrusted networks.
• Some NICs require "Wake on Magic Packet only" to be enabled.