Trying to get wake on lan to work from the internet

[pawelw]

I think I've set everything up correctly, but for some reason I can only get my home PC to wake up when connected to the same network (using public IP). From outside it doesn't work. What I've done:

• enabled all the relevant settings in BIOS and Windows
• assigned a static internal IP to my computer
• set port forwarding and triggering on the Hub for port 9 for the magic packet
• also tried disabling firewall

I can wake up the PC from suspend and power off from another device, but only when connected to the same network. What am I missing?

[Tudor]

From memory I believe Wake on LAN does not work across the internet. That’s why it’s called ……. LAN not Wake on WAN.

[pawelw]

I think the name is rather historical and refers to a standard, it doesn't matter whether the magic packet originates on local network or outside, theoretically.

[gitty · Accepted solution]

The hub needs to know the mac address (if the target is awake, it uses arp for that) . You could try reserving the ip - where you tell the its mac address. Some firmwares support doing it like that.

[pawelw]

It worked, woohoo! Thanks a lot!

Now, if only I could have an easy solution to the dynamic ip issue.. It seems I need another device to update ip if using things like ddns, which kind of defeats the purpose of WOL. Anyway, in practice the ip from Virgin is unlikely to change for a while, I think.

[legacy1]

Other way around it is to have a small PC on the network you can log in and run wake on lan

[gitty]

Did the computer sleep for a while, before you tested it? Just to make sure the arp entry doesnt time out

[pawelw]

No, I'll test it again after a longer time

[pawelw]

Unfortunately, it stops working after a while. I recall actually the same situation before, even without adding the MAC in the DHCP settings.. Is there any way to fix this?

[Client62]

"Now, if only I could have an easy solution to the dynamic ip issue"

Allocate device's LAN IP from the DHCP Reserved list so it becomes a known LAN IP.