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Microsoft's Sleep Proxy Lowers PC Energy Use
alphadogg writes "Microsoft researchers have slashed desktop energy use with a sleep proxy system that maintains a PC's network presence even when it is turned off or put into standby mode. Microsoft has deployed the sleep proxy system to more than 50 active users in the Building 99 research facility in Redmond, Wash., according to the Microsoft Research Web site and a paper that will be presented at the Usenix technical conference in Boston later this month. ... Sleep proxies allow machines to be turned off while keeping them connected to the network, waking the machines when a user or IT administrator attempts to access them remotely."
This is something new? Isn't this basically just wake on lan with an external box? Meaning that rather than having a part of the computer powered on in case the packet to wake up comes through, they're doing it with an external box. I'm a bit curious as to why this justifies any particular coverage.
This sounds awfully familiar... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Proxy_Service
Reinventing something that's been available for years is not 'coming up with good technologies'.
Now what they SHOULD have done is just cache the MAC of the PC in AD along with the rest of the object (It might already be there as part of the auth stuff) and then mod the remote access client to try and ping first, no reply? Send a Wake on Lan packet.
I was expecting a sleep proxy for me so that I could stay up all night while the proxy wasted time sleeping.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
hey thats great.. Its as simple as modding every single remote access application that currently exists and will ever exist.. such as firefox.. thats so simple... you are brilliant.
"His name was James Damore."
Syndrome identified:
Any feature even remotely similar, but found on Apple products, means that Macs have been doing it 'for some time now' even if what the Mac is doing is just the crap built into the bios of every motherboard made for the last decade, and doesnt solve any of the real problems that this new solution is solving.
"His name was James Damore."
Swell, botnets can even operate with computers which had been turned off.
Another syndrome identified:
replying without knowing the full story. Or even thinking about it.
Wake-on-lan is indeed nothing new, but Apple did it differently. They combined it with Multicast DNS (Bonjour) and placed it in the ROUTER. This means that it's the router that traps a request for your computer, and send a WOL first. There's no 'wakeup' button to press anywhere, it work automatically. Your PC might support WOL too, but are you using it ? How do you wake it up ?
And by the way, Apple also implemented if for wireless devices (WMM) where WOL doesn't work.
Unfortunately, since Apple is not making any routers that you can use in your companies network, it only work on a home network if you have an Apple Airport Express or Extreme. Or if you have a Mac on the same subnet that is using Internet Sharing. So it doesn't work in a company where the biggest savings might be done.
It's also OpenSource: Note: see mDNSResponder source code at www.macosforge.org, which includes a full implementation of the DNS-SD/mDNS Sleep Proxy Service, available under the Apache 2.0 Open Source license. AND written up as a specification http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-cheshire-dnsext-multicastdns-11
Meaning if Linux or *BSD wanted to they too could also have it too. In fact, I'm really hoping that they do because I'd love to not have to send a WOL to my HTPC or Server when I want it to download something. I can just have my sheevaplug wget an address and have it wake itself.
Actually, in this case, Macs have been doing it since Snow Leopard was released, with Airport base stations. The base station will act as a proxy for any Bonjour-advertised service. If the Mac is asleep, the Airport will continue to advertise the bonjour offers. If another machine tries to connect to one of those services, the router will see it and will send the WOL packet to the mac.
So this does satisfy the basic need. It looks like the MS solution goes a bit further to making it work in an enterprise environment. With Apple's Wake On Demand, you need to be using Apple router, while with MS's you can use anything. It also looks like it could span routers, which Apple's can't do (with the exception of Back to My Mac with MobileMe). MS's paper does mention Apple's sleep proxy in its section on prior work, though it doesn't go into details on the differences.
So every user has to install a driver? Even Joe Plumber trying to access your invoice history web server?
You just dont seem to get it.
"His name was James Damore."
Interesting. Could we have a link, please?
Yes, as soon as the machine wakes up.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
MAC stands for Media Access Control.
"Machine Address Code" my ass...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
It's a good thing you're here to call out bullshit on Slashdot! I mean, Microsoft contending it invented all this in such a _cowardly_ way...oh wait, FTFA:
Phew, so Microsoft Research is presenting a research paper on this subject. Crisis averted.
Hey buddy, you and your "facts" can go fuck yourselves. I came into this discussion for some microsoft I mean M$ hate and I'll be damned if I'm going to let a few sensible facts and reasoned posts get in my way. Someone make a chairs joke, stat! Also, can we somehow work 640K into this? Lets see...640K seconds of sleep should be enough for anyone...umm....640K computers will only allow themselves...hmm...wait, I'll get it..
It's also OpenSource [...] Meaning if Linux or *BSD wanted to they too could also have it too.
They could, if it weren't patented.
If you read the fine article, you will see that they acknowledge wake on lan and other similar work. They are addressing a practical problem in large networks. Classic implementations of Wake-on-Lan wake the computer when another computer sends it a packet. This looks fine in theory, "my computer wakes up when it has something to do," but it does not work well in practice, in a large network.
In any network of a certain size, there is a lot of noise, scans, keep alive traffic. That traffic causes packets to be received frequently, maybe a couple times per minutes. When a computer awakes, it takes some time to put it back to sleep, maybe a minute. Given enough background traffic, the computer never goes to sleep.
The solution is some form of filter, to only wake up the computer if the incoming data packet is "important." For that, you need a proxy. And the proxy needs a lot of tuning. If it does not wake up on "important" traffic, the users are pissed. If it wakes up too often for trivial pings, the energy bill increases. What they claim here is that after a year of trial, they have validated a particular tuning that works well. Seems interesting indeed.