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."

Comments

Wake on Lan?

[hedwards]

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.

Re:Wake on Lan?

[Rockoon]

So, basically it's a wake on lan, but that which works everytime some moron is doing a portscan or ssh-breakin attempt on your system? Why would such a system even have a off mode?

..so basically, no its not like wake on demand.

"SleepNotifier alerts SleepServer just before the client goes to sleep, and SleepServer ensures that all incoming traffic meant for the client comes to the proxy instead," Microsoft writes in another article titled "Trying to cure PC insomnia." "The proxy server's role is to monitor traffic and respond accordingly. For some requests, it responds on behalf of the client so the client can continue sleeping, and others it ignores. Some traffic, such as a user access request, causes the SleepServer proxy to awaken the client and present the user with apparently seamless remote access."

So basically we have a system that uses Wake On Lan to wake the remote machine automatically for user requests, but also avoids waking it for stupid shit like pings.

This is, in effect, what other researchers are trying to solve in a decent manner. Wake On Lan requires the waker to know a thing or two about the sleeping system (for example, that its sleeping) and simple frontend devices that have solved this in the past wake the system for everything and are also permanent proxies (proxying even when the system ISNT sleeping, for example)

Re:Give them a break

[XMode]

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.

Re:MS invented here JUST LIKE THEY ALWAYS DO

[0100010001010011]

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.

Linux or *BSD

[200_success]

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.