Wake my PC up remotely?

willhub

willhub

willhub

Caporegime
Joined
3 Jan 2006
Posts
25,236
Location
Chadderton, Oldham
Hi,

I'm thinking so I can remote into my PC from work and also if I'm away to do some tasks on it, I want to be able to wake the PC remotely, is this possible with a BT Hub 5 or 6?

Also what software is best for this? I believe I'll also need to set up DDNS too?

And will the PC use much power when it's turned off "listening" for a "magic packet"?

Thanks.
 
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I've been doing WOL for over 10 years. It can be quite handy. I did it when I was on holiday about 10 years ago in Cyprus. The bar owner where we had our meals was having some computer issues so I needed to get some files off my computer to fix it; he gave us free meals for the rest of our holiday. ;)

· It definitely can work from a PC that has been shutdown, not just sleep or hibernate. You do have to enable an option in the bios.
· You have to be able to open a port (Port 9 for me) in your router to enable the magic packet to get to you PC.
· You also have to enable it in the properties section for your network card drivers.
· If your IP address is dynamic than you will need some kind of IP forwarder like DDNS (I use http://freedns.afraid.org/)

I use an app on my phone 'Wake on Lan'. There are many that will work. If your router is decent enough then you can also remotely log into the router and remotely wake connected PC (it has to be a wired connection, does not work over wifi)
 
Thanks for that, I have a BT smart hub, will be changing providers in a few months maybe I can modify the router as I hear they're good
 
This thread just reminded me. Anyone had issues where WOL stopped working remotely? I had it al working, port 9 for one PC and port 8 for another (which then forwarded as port 9 to either machine) and used WOL software on phone or laptop to wake up either using my IP address with the required port (9 or 8). Worked fine for a week or so the stopped working. Works fine connected to my router, even if I supply the IP Address (IP address for my fixed IP, not the local address for the PC).
Thinking about it, maybe it's the router security or something.
Ive ended up leaving the lower powered PC on for now, remote desktoping to that and then performing a WOL for the other machine to wake it up.
If anyone has other thoughts on why it might have stopped working....
 
This will apply to the OP as well but the main place that you will have problems is the router. This is why it is important to have a good one in the first place sometimes you need a good router plus good firmware.

The 4 things you will need to check your router can do are.
· Port forwarding; to allow access to port for the magic packet to be sent to the PC. You could use DMZ but this is not as secure.
· Give your PC a manually assigned static IP address on your LAN. So not to use DHCP i.e. always give your PC the internal IP address of 192.168.1.20
· Router firmware should have 'Persistent static ARP entry'. If your router does not have this WOL will only work for a few seconds after the PC is shutdown. This bit can be a bit tricky as some router firmware has this built in by default. I used to use DD-WRT firmware on my Asus AC68U which had this by default so I didn't need to do anything. I then changed to Merlin firmware for the better Wifi and this didn't have it so I had to create it manually by using Telnet/SSH into the router, which is not so straight forward.
· It is also handy if your router has a WAN-DDNS option so you can setup the IP forwarder. You can run one on your PC but this is not as effective as having your router do it.
 
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