Wake on lan over the internet

ochawker

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Jan 13, 2007
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How can configure my wndr3700 for wake on lan over the internet....it work fine within my network but not over the internet
 
Solution
Assuming you've already setup WOL correctly on NIC, bios, router, given a static ip to the computer, tested it out and were initially successful doing WOL over WAN, but failed after a period of shut-down time, is because your router clears its arp table as stated above.

However, there is a KISS way to bypass that pesky cleared arp list that obviously doesn't contain your shut-down computer. No telnet, no hacking static entry in DHCP that will eventually lockup your router, no suspect firmware, no VPN, no dedicated computer required.

Although similar, this is not VPN. The caveat is you must have a printer, voip or any device with an IP/MAC address that is constantly on, then a simple inexpensive $15 hub after the router will work...

Kewlx25

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WOL sends a non-routable packet. Won't work over the internet.

To be specific, it uses a broadcast frame, which means your local router will just ignore it and the many routers between your and your computer will also ignore.
 

ochawker

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Jan 13, 2007
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18,510

 

Kewlx25

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If your NIC supports it, you can set it up to wake up from ANY packets directed to it.

eg. Setup port forwarding on port 12345 to your computer. Then "telnet <External IP> 12345 " from another computer and the TCP request to open that port will wake your computer up.

Again, your NIC has to support this and not just the "Magic Packet".

Another thing is you would have a dedicated computer inside your network that you can remote onto and you can make that computer send off a "Magic" packet to your computer to wake it up.

At my last job, we had a central computer that did our WOL and we could send out magic packets to computers by name. This one computer HAD to be on all vLANs because the packet is non-routable, so it had to originate on the local vLAN.

99% of the reason for routers is to break up broadcast domains. The magic packet is a broadcast frame.

Don't forget, if you ever have a power-outage or un-plug your computer for any reason, you will more than likely have to boot to the OS and shutdown again before WOL will work.

WOL gets initialized by the OS when the Os tells your NIC which IP to look for. Since the magic packet is a broadcast frame, it does NOT contain the MAC address of your NIC, which means your NIC has to watch for packets that contain it's IP address. It can't know it's IP until the OS assigns it. Unless you have a custom setup or the NIC supports it some other way.

Warning:
I use to have my NIC setup to wake from any packets and not just the Magic packet. My wife's computer, which runs Vista, like to periodically probe the network and update file shares. Well, she has a file share on my computer. This meant when she went to explorer, her computer would send out a request to my machine via SMB, which meant my computer would wake up. Typically, my computer would wake up within an hour of shutting down.

Kind of defeated the purpose to even shutting my computer down.
 

Kewlx25

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www.logmein.com Free Version

I Googled LMI and as far as I can tell, it has the exact same limitation as what I posted before.

In order for WOL to work, you MUST have local network access as the WOL packet will not router over the internet. What LMI will do is you either VPN into your LAN and run the program to send a WOL over the VPN or you have another dedicated computer running 24/7 locally on the LAN that you can connect to and have LMI tell that computer to send a WOL packet.

I'm sure there's a free Linux approach that can involve a very low power atom CPU with a small $10 1GB flash card to boot from that could do the same thing.
 

Kewlx25

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You may have Googled LMI but I have it installed and I can "Switch on this computer" from the Internet.

I'm curious how you have it setup. From what I've read, there are a few ways to setup LMI to do WOL. Do you have only one computer on the network then you forwarded a port and have it wake on any packet?

I'm not saying that your setup doesn't work, because obviously you say it is. I'm just interested in how it's setup. I've done my fair share of Network Security, Network Admin, Network Engineering & Design, and Server Administration classes on top of debugging & setting up vLANs and routers to work with WOL for actual work/real world LANs(not class related).

I decided to double check myself with Wikipedia as a reference to make sure I wasn't out of date with my WOL knownledge since I last worked with them a few years back.

Wikipeida:
The computer being woken does not know whether the wakeup signal comes from another machine on the same network or from anywhere else. If the magic packet can be made to reach a computer, it can originate anywhere (e.g., from the Internet). This can be achieved by a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which makes the remote computer appear to be a member of the Local Area Network (LAN). In the absence of a VPN, a computer connected to a router can be woken if a magic packet sent over the Internet is routed to it. This requires any firewall to be set up to allow entry of the Wake-on-LAN signal to a specified port. The port can be forwarded to the computer to be woken up; or some routers permit the packet to be broadcast to the entire LAN. However, some routers do not support this as they will not forward broadcast packets.

You'll notice that Wikipedia says the exact same thing I said above.

#1a. The WOL packet MUST originate on the local switch as the packet is NOT rout-able over the internet.
#1b. One exception to routing is if you have direct access to ALL of the routers between the source machine and the destination you can allow the routers to pass the WOL packet, but is otherwise by default off and nost major router/ISP will forward.
#2. You can use VPN access to make the packet look like it originated on the local network, but you still need to setup a VPN.
#3. Access to another machine on the local network. If you can access another machine locally, you can have that machine drop the packet on the LAN.

These are the 3 main points I originally made, but I didn't read Wikipedia to make my original statement, I just used my current knowledge of how WOL/Routers work.

Again, I'm not saying you're "wrong", I'm just saying all of my understanding and experience says only the above 3 cases will work reliably.

In a nutshell. In order for WOL to work, your NIC MUST support it. The WOL standard states that the packet is a broadcast frame. Broadcast frames are NOT routed on the internet as "real" routers ONLY do layer 3 while broadcast frames ONLY operate at layer 2.

In order to get around this, your NIC would have to support a non-standard WOL setup which requires drivers/firmware from the manufacturer to implement. In my case, Intel has an option on my NIC to wake from ANY packets directed to my machine. This is not standard and actually sucks since Windows SMB likes to connect/refresh shares a lot.
 
G

Guest

Guest
You are correct that the NIC must support WOL. LMI determines whether the NIC supports WOL. I have multiple computer with LMI installed and when I click Switch on my computer, LMI does wake the correct one.
 

Kewlx25

Distinguished
You are correct that the NIC must support WOL. LMI determines whether the NIC supports WOL. I have multiple computer with LMI installed and when I click Switch on my computer, LMI does wake the correct one.

When doing WOL over the internet, does it work if all of your computers(with LMI installed) are currently turned off?

I'm wondering if LMI recognizes that all your computers are on the same LAN and has one of the running computers send out the WOL packet.



Anyway, it doesn't hurt to try out LMI since it's free. If it work, it works, even if I may not understand it. I still think it's falling into one of those above cases since it's obviously working for Grumpy.
 

Kewlx25

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Being that Grumpy is very sure of himself, I was convinced that there must be a possible way to use WOL w/o having a computer on.

I did find a site that explained a possible process. Add port forwarding to your Router. Pick a port. Set this port to forward to *.255 for the IP (eg 192.168.1.255).

According to this site, even consumer grade switches *should* translate the 255 IP to a broadcast packet. This of course would result in a standard WOL packet no matter which port it came on.

I haven't played with Wireshark(Ethreal) in a while and I'm not sure how standard translating *.255 into broadcasts is as I have never had luck on an non-Layer3 switches with this. But then again, they're probably using a low-end/Older version of L3 switch chips in consumer grade switches now-a-days anyway. Like I said, I have not tested this as of recent so it could work.
 

DrLex

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May 8, 2010
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I have been trying to do WoL over internet and after dozens of frustrating experiments, my conclusion is that my router doesn't allow it. Port forwarding to a broadcast address does just nothing at all. I see no broadcast packets on my LAN with a network sniffer if I send something to the port that's supposed to be forwarded. Nevertheless, I found reports in other forums from people for whom it works. I suppose it all depends on the model and firmware of the router.
 

Kewlx25

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Netgear's own 3700 forumn says their router does NOT support port forwarding to a broadcast address and thusly break our idea for using that to make a valid WoL packet.

I guess you'll have to wait until OpenWRT or DD-WRT has a stable release for the 3700.
 

pooflinger1

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Mar 9, 2006
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Simple...

1. Setup a VPN.
2. Connect to your VPN from the remote computer.
3. Have wolcmd installed on the remote computer in your C:\Windows\System32 folder (windows).
4. Execute wolcmd from a command prompt as instructed on their download page.


If you have a spare computer with at least 2 nics in it, you can easily install Untangle (a linux based FREE firewall) which comes with OpenVPN. You can also add a wireless card to it and turn it into a pretty nice wireless router with built in firewall, VPN, and virus scanning. There are also other ways to accomplish setting up a VPN depending on your overall network setup/available equipment.
 

ochawker

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Jan 13, 2007
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Ok i got wake on wan to work....by using dd-wrt on wndr3700 router
set up wol in the firmware....

Enable WOL on the Computer

1. On the LAN adapter of the computer (physical ethernet adapter, WOL does not work over wireless connections!), choose Properties/Configure.
2. Power Management tab (far right). Check the second and third boxes to enable WOL. Press OK until you are back at Network Connections. Now the computer can normally be started from Hibernate, Standby, or PowerOff modes via a special management packet.
3. Get ready to test your set-up by using a utility like WOL Magic Packet Sender http://magicpacket.free.fr/ (free). Install it on both the computer you are using and a second PC on the same physical LAN.
4. On the WOL computer, open WOL Magic Packet and on the Receive tab, click the green Start button.
5. On the second computer, open WOL Magic Packet and on the Send tab, put in:
1. IP Address of WOL computer for Host Name
2. 0.0.0.0 for Subnet Mask (select from drop-down)
3. MAC address of LAN adapter on WOL computer. Use the command 'ipconfig /all' if you don't know what this is.
6. Click the green Send button. The WOL computer should respond with a pop-up box showing a packet was received.

Remote Wake On LAN via Port Forwarding

To remotely wake up a computer over the Internet using Wake On LAN- follow these instructions:

1 - Create a port forward rule on the Web Interface (Applications & Gaming -> Port Range Forward) to the chosen ip:

wol | 9 | 9 | udp | 192.168.1.254 | x

* Here, 9 is the default, but you can use any port number so long as your client wake-up application can talk to a port other than 9. Consider that most WOL services will use either UDP port 7 or 9.

2 - Add a static ARP entry by typing the following two lines into the Web Interface Administration -> Commands section and save with Save Startup.

ip neigh change 192.168.1.254 lladdr [MAC address to wake] nud permanent dev br0
ip neigh add 192.168.1.254 lladdr [MAC address to wake] nud permanent dev br0

3 - Reboot router, or execute the startup commands manually.

* To wake your computer from the internet using the DD-WRT device DynDNS name (or if you know it, the public IP of the router), try one of the following services;

1. Mestrona's online WOL. You need to forward port 9 udp in step one, to use this service.
2. Remote Wake-On-LAN. Seems to work both on ports 7 and 9 and allows WOL by a single URL of the form: http://mobile.wakeonlan.me/?ip=HOSTNAME&mac=MACADDRESS
3. To use the WOL Magic Packet application from a second PC:
1. Host Name: DynDNS name of your DD-WRT device.
2. Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.255
3. MAC Address: WOL computer MAC address, not the DD-WRT MAC.
4. Click the green Send button.
 

Netcon123

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Jan 18, 2012
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Sorry about this but i had to reply to this to help out other people that might stumble through here. What was written above contains some mistakes

To begin it was stated that wol packets do NOT contain a mac address this is wrong. The point of this broadcasted packet is to operate outside of IP requirments for the precise reason that the ip stack is not intilized until the OS boots therefore the magic packet DOES CONTAIN a mac address it is the only way it can work. A wol packet itself is a UDP packet that contains 6 bytes of FFh and 16 times the repetition of the MAC address.

Second. As mentioned in this thread you 100% can do wol over the internet by using a wol application or website that can direct a packet to your external ip and then turning on port forwading on your router to either forward to your broadcast address or failing that direct it to an internal ip that is live. The reason it might have failed to wake up your pc from wan is probably to do with arp cache clearing. When your device has been powered off your router will at some point (router dependent) clear its arp table. If the router cant find the mac address in its arp table it will just dump the packet. Thats why you need to create a static dhcp entry on your router

I know its a old post but for someone stumbling across this wanting to understand how it works the facts can be helpfull
 

2dumb2care

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Oct 14, 2012
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Assuming you've already setup WOL correctly on NIC, bios, router, given a static ip to the computer, tested it out and were initially successful doing WOL over WAN, but failed after a period of shut-down time, is because your router clears its arp table as stated above.

However, there is a KISS way to bypass that pesky cleared arp list that obviously doesn't contain your shut-down computer. No telnet, no hacking static entry in DHCP that will eventually lockup your router, no suspect firmware, no VPN, no dedicated computer required.

Although similar, this is not VPN. The caveat is you must have a printer, voip or any device with an IP/MAC address that is constantly on, then a simple inexpensive $15 hub after the router will work. NOTE, it must be a hub. A hub broadcasts to all devices connected to it, a switch will only send packets to the specific device its intended for and not the other connected devices. Set your router to port forward (Use port 9) to go to the constant active device (I have a cheap HP Combo Printer/Fax that is always on) and thus will always show up in the dynamic arp cache. Therefore the packet will not get dumped since it has someplace to go.

When you send a magic packet to the router's IP address, it will forward it through the hub to the printer, however the magic packet contains the MAC address of the computer I want woken up. According to the router, the target device for the magic packet is the printer, but the hub inside the LAN will also broadcast it to all devices, one being the hub-connected computer even though its not in the router's dynamic arp list.

Always a good idea to reserve the IP addresses for the constant on device and the computer to be woken up, if your router supports it.

Yeah, its a 2-year-old thread but I too found it through "WOL over WAN" research and so will others looking for answers. Using a Netgear WNDR 3700 router and Netgear DS104 hub.
 
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