A method for waking up a distant device from a local device, through a transmission medium and distant and local media converters. Initially, at least one of the physical and link layer units of the distant device is off, and its processing layer unit is off or in Low Power mode. The transceiver of the distant media converter is on. When receiving an initial wake-up signal from the local device, the transceiver of the distant media converter generates an electrical wake-up signal converted from the initial wake-up signal. The transceiver of the distant media converter sends the electrical wake-up signal, or derived wake-up information, to the processing layer unit of the distant device, through a transmission line independent of the physical and link layer units of the distant device. When receiving the electrical wake-up signal or the wake-up information, the processing layer unit of the distant device turns on.