I am in need of two static addresses one for my PC and one for my NAS in order to take advantage of Wake-on-LAN (WoL). From what I can see this is impossible to set up with the Virgin Media Hub so am I right in thinking the only way of doing this is to configure the VM Hub as a modem and then attach it to a router and configure it on the router?
Your own router is always best. You are confusing ‘static IP address’ with ‘DHCP Reserved IP address.
A static IP address is set on your device. A DHCP reserved IP address is set on the VM hub.
1) In the VM Hub menu DHCP >>> Reserved List add the MAC Addresses of the two devices and allocate them an IP, the DHCP process will now allocate these devices the specified IPs.
2) Just assign a static IP on each device by hand, use IPs between 192.168.0.2 to 192.168.0.9 inclusive i.e. just below the start of the DHCP range.
We have 4 devices with static IPs, we use both methods depending on the abilities of the device.
You don't have to have a static or reserved IP address as Wol packets can be sent to DDNS or MAC address.
WoL packets are sent to the network broadcast address, they don't need DDNS. The broadcast address is the "all ones" host address. For most home routers that'll be he one ending 255
e.g. 192.168.1..255 or 192.168.0.255
This ends up translating to the broadcast MAC address (all Fs)
The Magic packet format is essentially 6 bytes of FF ad then the MAC address of he device you want to wake up.
If a device is set to WoL it checks to see if the MAC address of the packet matches, if it doesn't the packet is dropped, if it does then the device starts up.
Note that you can't send a WoL packet direct to a computers IP address, because it doesn't have one until the operating system has started up, so setting a static address on your PC would not work.
Tim
Edit, if you're thinking of using WoL from outside the home network, it won't work unless you can connect to a device within the network that's able to send the WoL packets for you. You can't use port forwarding to send a WoL packet to the broadcast IP - this is a limitation on all SoHO routers and not just Virgin's hub.
