I have a non-professionally/non-commercially purposed server - a 5yo laptop actually - on the www with low traffic, accessed no more than perhaps twice a day, and of course at unpredictable times. Being a laptop and so rarely used, I'd like to conserve power (battery or plugged in) and heat generation while not in use rather than having it on 24x7. Is there a way to awaken a system from a request of any protocol of any kind, load up, and pass the packet to the usual server software stack when up and ready? Is there an OS that can handle this case over any others, by listening on the ip yet still be technically mostly "asleep"? I'm getting discouraged by the apparent need for a special packet to awaken the machine.
I'm rather ignorant on related standards, programmatically altering bios behavior outside the typical interface, hacking routers to force sending this wakeup packet on requests, or other methods. However, any info or leads to obscure methods and standards, hack or otherwise, would be appreciated.
Edit: if this question is more appropriate for superuser.com, please someone with permission to do so move it there.