WOL over internet

[jashennessy1000]

I have the following issue:

Router netis WF2780 with DDNS on, set to port mirror WAN to LAN 1.
PC1: BIOS setting for wol on, win 8.1, disabled fast boot, NIC allowed to wake pc, accept magic packet. Connected to LAN 1. if sent wol from internet to DDNS address wakes up, all ok
PC2: BIOS setting for wol on, win 10, disabled fast boot, NIC allowed to wake pc, accept magic packet. Connected to LAN 1. if sent wol from internet to DDNS address does not wake up, BUT if I log on to router and send wol from there it wakes up.

Any ideea what could be the problem?
Thanks

 

[camieabz]

Suggest you start with comparing WOL and power/sleep/hibernate settings in Win 8.1 and the adapters on each PC. See if there are any differences.

 

[nigelivey]

This shouldnt work at all, You are trying to implement WOW (Wake on wan), there are some jumbled solutions to this like you are attempting but by doing so you are just punching a hole through your firewall! WOW isnt an actual technology.

 

[bill001g]

If your router has WoL support that is your best option. You should be able to access the router with HTTPS via the internet and then instruct the router to send the packets.

The key problem tends to be ARP timeout. A WOL packet is a packet sent to the broadcast mac with the mac to wake inside the packet in a particular format. You will notice there is no discussion of ip or ports etc. This is a layer 2 protocol and only uses mac addresses.

 

[Alabalcho]

There are easier and universal solutions to this, which do not involve WoL, holes thru the firewall, or black magic:
- configure your PC to turn ON on mains power ON;
- plug that PC into a Smart Plug outlet
- If your PC is on - no changes. If it's off, toggle the smartplug - it will turn on the PC.

 

[jashennessy1000]

If its arp time out, why it works with on pc but not with another? And I actually need to remotely wake my pc sometimes and I have an app on my phone that would wake the pc. Now I have to remotely log onto the router from a browser .. it is inconvenient. I tried everything .. the router is not the issue because it works with the other PC, this PC wakes if the packet is sent from router... I was wondering if the router changes the packet in some way?

If your router has WoL support that is your best option. You should be able to access the router with HTTPS via the internet and then instruct the router to send the packets.

The key problem tends to be ARP timeout. A WOL packet is a packet sent to the broadcast mac with the mac to wake inside the packet in a particular format. You will notice there is no discussion of ip or ports etc. This is a layer 2 protocol and only uses mac addresses.

 

[bill001g]

So lets be very clear there is no such thing as wake on WAN.

What is working for the one machine is mostly luck and I can pretty much guarantee if you leave it off for say a couple hours and then try it it will not work.

The reason it works when you remote into the router is the router is sending actual wake on lan packets on the lan interface.

 

[jashennessy1000]

I have left my machine off for even 24 hours and cables removed...

 

[bill001g]

So here is the procedure to make it work your router may not have the features though. When you actually understand what these commands do you will know why there is no such thing as wake on wan.

1. Set a static arp to some dummy ip address in your network. Map it to the broadcast mac address.
2. Set up the port forwarding to this ip address, there are ports that the app uses but since wake on lan does not use ports it really does not matter.

The app should be able to send packets. But you now have opened you internal network to a broadcast attack. Anyone that send traffic to the external ip on the correct port will send data to ALL you internal machine. This is why vendor many years ago removed the ability to ping the broadcast IP address from a different subnet. You could do a denial of service attack with a simple ping command

 

[jashennessy1000]

Maybe I did not write properly.. router fwd's th magic packet just fine otherwise the old PC would not turn on.
As of now(when I write this) the old PC has no OS was off-line for days and i just plugged the network cable from router into the LAN of that PC. I sent a WOL to DDNS of the router and it turned on instantly. So I thing there is something not set right on BIOS or NIC. I will link some screenshots of the settings below:
BIOS: https://imgur.com/a/Tc5ahRH
NIC setup: https://imgur.com/a/EJDnZ1w

So here is the procedure to make it work your router may not have the features though. When you actually understand what these commands do you will know why there is no such thing as wake on wan.

1. Set a static arp to some dummy ip address in your network. Map it to the broadcast mac address.
2. Set up the port forwarding to this ip address, there are ports that the app uses but since wake on lan does not use ports it really does not matter.

The app should be able to send packets. But you now have opened you internal network to a broadcast attack. Anyone that send traffic to the external ip on the correct port will send data to ALL you internal machine. This is why vendor many years ago removed the ability to ping the broadcast IP address from a different subnet. You could do a denial of service attack with a simple ping command

 

[bill001g]

What you have working is pure luck that it works. It should not work so how can I possibly say how to make it work on another machine.

No matter how much you want this to work it is a hack. Maybe you found your own hack and then you need to figure out how to add a second machine.

The only "hack" method that work fairly reliably is the one I posted.