Wake on LAN Alternatives
Well, the simplest hardware solution would be to wire-up your on switch to get switched on by a relay of some sort. Considering the 'complexity' of the problem (which is to say you need to emulate pressing a simple, wimpy power button), pretty much any microcontroller would do, and all you need to do is tap into the power switch lead (which is easy to replace in you mess up, and bridge it as needed.
I'd ask though, do you want to turn it on after switching it off (cause the system is not in use) or in case of power failure? Many systems, even geriatric PIIIs can be set to simply reboot after power failure
I'd also point out there's the mechanical approach, though i suppose having a computer running to switch on another computer is less practical than the above.
According to the manual on asus.com the board has "wakeup on PCI" and "wakeup on PCIE". Enable these for WOL.
You may also need to enable WOL in your OS. It might be disabled by default, but I don't know FreeNAS (nor FreeBSD) good enough to tell you how to.
Update: The networking chip is connected to PCI or PCIe Bus, and can thus wake up the system through its bus wakeup line. There are two prerequisite conditions:
- The PCI/PCIe wakeup system is active (powered and enabled).
- The network chip has WOL enabled - through its driver settings, usually.
You could always install a network card with WOL that is supported by the OS. Provided you can wake on PCI then you should be OK.