Question

I have a computer that’s configured for magic WOL packets, so the adapter will respond to ICMP. Pinging the computer doesn’t seem like it’d provide a lot of useful information since it’ll always respond even while off. The machine runs Windows 7 and was wondering if there any small and fast protocols available I could use to retrieve information about the status of the computer. Preferably something small and can be implemented quickly in the form of sockets through php/python. The least amount of information I want is whether the computer is off or on.

I’m thinking about using MS-HGRP to list all supported systems since I know for a fact the machine appears in the home network. But I wan’t see if there’s something much more efficient than that.

Answer 1

Time was, systems implemented an echo service on TCP port 7. If it is still easily available on your machine, it could be as easy as echo foo | nc address echo and seeing if there is a response. It’d be a simple enough service to re-implement, if it isn’t easily available.