Dev's Mad Science: Sleeping Server Wakes on Demand Via WoL, Floating IP/MAC Handoff Keeps Clients Blissfully Unaware

A recent pre-experiment has validated the feasibility of a novel on-demand access system, where a target machine remains in suspend mode while idle and is awakened via Wake on LAN when a client requests access. The system ensures clients always connect to a stable destination, without requiring reconfiguration, by handing off a fixed service IP and MAC address between nodes. The experiment, conducted using Linux network namespaces, demonstrated that TCP connection attempts can succeed after a takeover, even when the target machine is waking up. Key design points include enforcing single ownership of the service identity, avoiding fast-fail during wake-up, and triggering cache convergence after takeover. The system has significant implications for power-saving and efficient resource utilization, particularly in data centers and cloud computing environments. With these requirements formalized, the design can be progressed to implementation on real hardware, potentially leading to more efficient and scalable on-demand access systems.