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I am having trouble enabling WOL over the internet.

WOL from within my network (LAN) works just fine - I am able to send a packet to UDP 9 and the machine wakes up.

The problem is waking the computer outside the LAN. Using WireShark I cannot see any packets enter the network. Port 9 is port forwarded to 192.168.0.127 (broadcast IP, my subnet is 255.255.255.128).

I have read that some have suggested setting up a DHCP reservation on the broadcast IP 192.168.0.127 to FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF, however my router does not give me an option for that (.127 is outside the allowed range..).

Any suggestions?

Alex
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2 Answers2

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It's unclear if your NAT actually honors the mapping to the broadcast address. Instead, put the machine you want to wake on a static IP address (either by manually configuring it for an IP address within the NAT subnet but outside the DHCP lease pool, or by configuring the DHCP server to reserve a particular IP for that machine's MAC address (or other DHCP Client ID).

Then add a static ARP mapping your router's ARP table. For best results, make sure to do it in a way that survives reboots. Some routers don't expose a way to do this in their web-based administration UI. You may have to do it via the shell, if your router gives you a way to get to the shell. If your router doesn't give you either option, you could install an aftermarket open source firmware distro on it, such as OpenWrt or DD-WRT.

The most common reason remote WoL doesn't work is because while the target machine is sleeping, its default gateway router times out its ARP table entry for that machine, and then when the WoL packet comes in, the router can't forward it onto the LAN because it doesn't know what destination MAC address to put in the Ethernet headers. A static ARP mapping (ARP table entry) is one way around this, but many home gateway router products don't provide a way to do this.

Spiff
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I had hard time to achieve WOL over internet. I tried multiple options like openvpn, ddns on router but I always had issues making it to work.

Finally I arrived at conclusion that for smooth and consistent functioning I definitely need a running machine over that network locally.For e.g. any remote desktop applications or any mini pc based on raspberry etc. However that meant this other system should also be running 24x7.

While thinking of machines running on my LAN I realized that I have Amazon ECHO 24x7 running on LAN and connected to internet. So finally I could achieve consistent WOL over internet using Wake on LAN Alexa skill. You can control your ECHO device over internet through Alexa app installed on phone. And over LAN you just have to issue voice command to turn on PC or press button in Alexa app on phone.