Constructing a Wake On Lan packet (low level packet)

Hello there!

As an exercise, I am trying to implement a WOL programme to use inside my local network. As per the specification of a magic packet:

Quote:

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The magic packet is a broadcast frame containing anywhere within its payload 6 bytes of all 255 (FF FF FF FF FF FF in hexadecimal), followed by sixteen repetitions of the target computer's 48-bit MAC address, for a total of 102 bytes.

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Let's say I have a MAC address of AA:BB:CC:DD and I want to construct a data element to be sent to my network (broadcasted actually) so that my device with said MAC address can accept it.

If I go and write std::string mac = "AABBCCDD", I am giving the ASCII values of each character to mac, which will be translated (to bytes) 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 44. Would I need to use std::hex in a string stream to accomplice my goal?

What is the standard practice to create such a low level packet? Should I still use unsigned char arrays?

Thank you so much for your time!

RAW sockets on Level 2...
Easy to do in Linux... hard to do in everything else...

I am gladly on linux. I will definitely look into RAW sockets, but still this another matter, isn't it?

Code:

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#include <stdio.h>
 
typedef unsigned char uchar;
 
int main() {
    uchar packet[102] = {'\xFF', '\xFF', '\xFF', '\xFF', '\xFF', '\xFF'};
    uchar mac[6] = {0, 0, '\xAA', '\xBB', '\xCC', '\xDD'};
 
    // construct packet
    for (int i = 0; i < 16; ++i)
        for (int j = 0; j < 6; ++j)
            packet[i * 6 + j + 6] = mac[j];
 
    // display on terminal
    for (int i = 0; i < 17; ++i) {
        for (int j = 0; j < 6; ++j)
            printf("%02X ", packet[i * 6 + j]);
        putchar('\n');
    }
 
    // write to binary file
    FILE *fout = fopen("packet.bin", "wb");
    fwrite(packet, 1, 102, fout);
    fclose(fout);
 
    return 0;
}

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