Can WoL but not WoWan

Hi All,

I'm really desperate.

I wish to wake up my desktop PC (wired) over the Internet from anywhere outside my little WiFi.

I was able to do it few years ago using good old Linksys WRT54GL and DD-WRT but now, with my
new system ("target desktop") including:

Motherboard ASUS H61M-VG3 (H51 PCI-E DDR3)
PC Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Router ASUS RT-N66U running TomatoUSB

Magic Packets reach my desktop from my WiFi laptop INSIDE my WiFi though.
(Can the laptop's connection-method to Internet - WiFi or wired make a difference???)
I test it by placing on my target's desktop "WOL-Magic Packet Sender" in Receive mode and observing i using
an old remote control tool "AnyPlaceControl".

I tried many settings advised by many sites, English and Polish language - failure.

I am a v. moderately advanced user and v. many tips/problems/issues in this area are much above my head.

So I need a step-by-step instruction, much as for a monkey : "...in this window insert/select/etc. this: ..."

Any suggestion where I could find this, or maybe you could help with some specific advice? ... specific for this specific problem: Magic Packets pass via LAN but not via WAN.

Anyway, thank you for your attention and regards,

Vladek
(Wladyslaw Moroz)
==============

I have not managed to wake something up that was connected to wifi.
Instead of sending magic packets over WAN you should get your router to send the packet.

Apparently a misunderstanding:
the computer connected to WiFi is the laptop through which I want to wake the wired target computer from anywhere in this world.

Vladek
(Wladyslaw Moroz)
==============

regardless as i was saying you cannot pass a magic packet over WAN without some complicated setup with risk of your PC being woken up by random from some random magic packet from somewhere random. Because magic packets work over layer 2 it is possible to send it to all hosts. Instead of trying to send one from WAN use your router as a VPN server, connect to it and than use your router to send a magic packet to the mac address of your PC.

what system error message said. and your motherboard needs to have wake on lan enabled. asi understand it your router sends the packet to the ip address, your computer at that ip address is shut down but the ip is still being kept alive by your mother board or at least the motherboard is listening. i think the blinky lights at the actual physical rj45 plug on the motherboard flash if it is monitoring for wol.

your router may be blocking wol packets being sent from something other than itself - but that is just a guess

voipair said:

what system error message said. and your motherboard needs to have wake on lan enabled. asi understand it your router sends the packet to the ip address, your computer at that ip address is shut down but the ip is still being kept alive by your mother board or at least the motherboard is listening. i think the blinky lights at the actual physical rj45 plug on the motherboard flash if it is monitoring for wol.

your router may be blocking wol packets being sent from something other than itself - but that is just a guess

Click to expand...

Thats not whats happening. What i was saying is that wake on LAN works on layer 2. IP address is on layer 3. The physical (MAC) address is the one you want. You cannot pass layer 2 over NAT without some complicated rules. Many routers now have wake on LAN capability to send packets to the mac address you define. For example on mikrotik to wake something up i login to my router and use the command /tool wol [mac address]. On consumer routers if it has that capability it will be via scripts or some feature which will involve you logging into your router and triggering it.

System Error Message said:

Thats not whats happening. What i was saying is that wake on LAN works on layer 2. IP address is on layer 3. The physical (MAC) address is the one you want. You cannot pass layer 2 over NAT without some complicated rules. Many routers now have wake on LAN capability to send packets to the mac address you define. For example on mikrotik to wake something up i login to my router and use the command /tool wol [mac address]. On consumer routers if it has that capability it will be via scripts or some feature which will involve you logging into your router and triggering it.

Click to expand...

Guys,
Thanks but it does not help me, concept of layers in Internet communication is above my head.
Perhaps I have been expecting too much or ASUS RT-N66U running TomatoUSB is too recent and there is not enough practical experience around yet...

Anyway, let me just repeat what I think is the problem:
it narrows down to the fact that Magic Packets originating from my Win XP laptop wake my Win7 desktop when the laptop is within my LAN but not from outside the LAN.
If you have any idea what makes the difference - fine, and if not - I won't bother you again.

Thank you.

What my idea is is getting the router to send the packets instead which is a lot more successful so you can even do it from WAN.

Heres what i do:
First i configure the NIC and put PC to sleep.
I then store that PC's MAC address in the router. To get the MAC address of target PC in windows open command prompt and type ipconfig /all and look for the ethernet interface you are using and it will be in the format of xx:xx:xx:xx:xx.
I than login to my router from either LAN or WAN and than tell it to send the specific packet to the PC i want to wake and wait for a few seconds.

I use this combined with teamviewer and ssh to remotely monitor and administrate my cluster while saving electricity.

From what i know ASUS routers (not sure with stock but RMerlin firmware has it) have a page for you to do this in which you add the host you want to wake to the page and whenever you login to your router you can wake it up from that page. Do a bit of searching on this forum and theres a recent thread about this in the ASUS section. I know for a fact that openWRT should have such a feature and hopefully tomato should too. You just need to go through the OS's manual on where it is.

System Error Message said:

What my idea is is getting the router to send the packets instead which is a lot more successful so you can even do it from WAN.

Heres what i do:
First i configure the NIC and put PC to sleep.
I then store that PC's MAC address in the router. To get the MAC address of target PC in windows open command prompt and type ipconfig /all and look for the ethernet interface you are using and it will be in the format of xx:xx:xx:xx:xx.
I than login to my router from either LAN or WAN and than tell it to send the specific packet to the PC i want to wake and wait for a few seconds.

I use this combined with teamviewer and ssh to remotely monitor and administrate my cluster while saving electricity.

From what i know ASUS routers (not sure with stock but RMerlin firmware has it) have a page for you to do this in which you add the host you want to wake to the page and whenever you login to your router you can wake it up from that page. Do a bit of searching on this forum and theres a recent thread about this in the ASUS section. I know for a fact that openWRT should have such a feature and hopefully tomato should too. You just need to go through the OS's manual on where it is.

Click to expand...

Hi,

Thanks but I am a very much ignorant above certain level and as to your reply "I than login to my router from ... WAN and ..." - I just do not know if there is any easy way to remotely (from WAN) access/login to my RT-N66U+TomatoUSB server. I tried following several different instructions from The Net but kept driving into dead end streets - either an instruction branches into downloadin/installing new software and/or an instruction stops being compatible with my setup, it just explains what to do in either physical router and/or its software that is/are different from mine (mine being RT-N66U+TomatoUSB).

So, is there an easy way to login to my router?
If there is not, I'll just surrender or return to good old XP and my old WRT54GL - I had no problems with Wake-0n-WAN then...

And finally: I still wonder what is stopping MagicPackets getting over WAN to my router>PC while they get through from inside my LAN - it cannot be my mobo's BIOS, so either RT-N66U and/or TomatoUSB but exactly WHERE???

Thank you.

Wladyslaw Moroz
=================ENDS

magicpackets are layer 2 while the internet uses layer 3. Anything that uses layer 2 cannot pass between a layer 3 network. Each node of a layer 3 network which is also a gateway is an endpoint of layer 2. Layer 2 uses things like mac addresses while layer 3 uses IP addresses.

on my asus router running RMerlin firmware has wake on LAN under network tools. All you have to do is install merlin firmware, go to that section and enter the mac address of the PC you want to send the packet to.

than look around other sections till you find VPN. Start the PPTP VPN server and set the username and password. Than when you are not at home create a VPN connection on your computer with your IP/domain and the username and password you set for your VPN server. once you connect just enter the router's LAN IP address and perform the same thing like you were on LAN.

the easy way to login your router from WAN is to enable the WAN management but it is less secured and you are going to end up with poor internet throughput and a full CPU usage of your router after a few days because of botnets trying to hack into your router.

Try adding the following to your init script, save, add the forwarding requirement (below), save and reboot and see how it goes...


The IP (listed) can be any IP in your subnet that you are not going to use (i.e. don't use 192.168.0.254 for any PC in the network).

Now forward ANY UPD port that you like (9 for example) to the same IP listed (192.168.0.254 in the example). Save the forward.

Note: Change the 192.168.0.254 to whatever IP range you're using (xxx.xxx.xxx.254).

Reboot router.


Try sending magic packet to your WAN using the MAC address of the device you want to wake

Note: This used to work on MIPS versions of Tomato routers. Not sure if it works with ARM based routers or not. Worth a shot and good luck!