I can turn on a pc from another machine on the same home network, but can not from the Internet. I am doing this Wake-On-WAN experiment at home by using two machines each connected to the Internet through different ISP. The problem must be somewhere in the BIOS or the router setting for the machine to be turned on. I reviewed the BIOS and found the relevant option was enabled by default. As for the router(D-Link DIR 655), I set the portforwarding for the machine with a arbitrary port number assigned. I did not see anything else relevant but I might have missed something. To send the magic packet, I am using depicus GUI. I also tried one at dslreports website. Any suggestion is appreciated.

There could be several issues here. Typically WOL applications use a "directed" broadcast for those magic packets. I assume that you are sending the packet to the public IP of your network and you are attempting to port forward the packet. You should also know that the configuraiton of network equipment has to allow this "directed" broadcast to pass through. Your best bet at this moment is to validate if the packet is reaching your internal network. You can do this by installing a HUB which is connected to your PC that is turned of and also another PC that is on running packet capture software (such as wireshark). If you can verfiy that the packet reaches this host, then the issue is with the configuraiton of the BIOS on the target PC. If the packet does not reach this target, you'll have to dig deeper, possibly by checking to see if its reaching the public IP (use the hub between the modem and the router to intercept the packet before it reaches the router). Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

JM, thank you very much for your detailed replly. I do not have the hub, and which does not seems to be available nowadays. I have switches but it lacks a monitor port which appears necessary for packet capturing. I can look for such switch but how about letting the host pc (the one to be turned on) manually turned on and capture the magic packet. If it fails to capture, then I get the special switch as above. Since I am unfamiliar with the packet capture, I appreciate your comment on the above before my proceeding the next step. PS: One of the link in my previous post which shows the magic packet sender, is found incorrect and now has been corrected.

Hello Churin, Your approach will work as well. If you leave the computer on and run a packet capture app on that system, you should be able to verify if the packet is reaching the computer. There is a slight learning curve to running the packet capture app (they are all about the same), and a heavier curve to learn how to analyze it. I checke out the link you posted, but I am not familiar with that free app. Most of them operate similiar with regard to the packet (directed broadcast). However, if you do some additional research, its also possible to construct a WOL directed at the target system rather than the subnet.Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

You are on the right track. I am sure this will be a learning experience for you. With regard to a hub, there is only one type. there is no such thing as a "switching" hub. Its either a hub or a switch. A hub operates a layer 1 of the OSI model. It has no intelligence. A hub is actually a multiport repeater. It simply repeats the network traffic on ALL ports. A switch on the other hand operates at layer 2 of the OSI model. A switch is a fancy version of a mutliport bridge. A swtich is a more efficient devices as it depends on MAC address to create what are called "collision" domains. A switch will only put the packet on the correct port (according to the MAC tables). Broadcast traffic will appear on all ports. In the case of a magic packet, if the source sends a "directed" broadcast, a switch will be OK since a switch repeats broadcast traffic on all ports. Some of the higher end switches (managed type) will have this setting disabled by default. So when in doubt, you simply use a hub as to not worry about all of the other details. If you know the source/destination IP and/or ports used, you can create a capture filter (somewhat difficult to do) or collect all traffic and create a display filter (usually a bit easier) to only see the traffic you care about. Microsoft's Network monitor is a little easier to use than Wireshark. As an alternative to your design, many people simply will create a VPN tunnel over the internet rather than try to natively get this to work over the internet/over NAT, etc... If you simply create a VPN tunnel back to your target network, you will be on the same network so alot of the additional configuration does not have to be worried about. Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

JM, I decided to follow exactly what you originally suggested since I found used Hub at eBay. It's 10Mbps hub so that I assume it is not switching type hub. I bought two units of different makes hoping at least one of them will work. They are scheduled to arrive sometimes in the next week. I have collected info about packet analysis which appears overwhelmingly not easy to learn as you mentioned. What I have to learn seems to be how to spot the magic packet among many other packets displayed on the Wireshark. I wonder if I can determine how the magic packet is displayed at the sending end. If so, then I can look for the same at the receiving end. Is this layman's simplistic idea?

You are on the right track. I am sure this will be a learning experience for you. With regard to a hub, there is only one type. there is no such thing as a "switching" hub. Its either a hub or a switch. A hub operates a layer 1 of the OSI model. It has no intelligence. A hub is actually a multiport repeater. It simply repeats the network traffic on ALL ports. A switch on the other hand operates at layer 2 of the OSI model. A switch is a fancy version of a mutliport bridge. A swtich is a more efficient devices as it depends on MAC address to create what are called "collision" domains. A switch will only put the packet on the correct port (according to the MAC tables). Broadcast traffic will appear on all ports. In the case of a magic packet, if the source sends a "directed" broadcast, a switch will be OK since a switch repeats broadcast traffic on all ports. Some of the higher end switches (managed type) will have this setting disabled by default. So when in doubt, you simply use a hub as to not worry about all of the other details. If you know the source/destination IP and/or ports used, you can create a capture filter (somewhat difficult to do) or collect all traffic and create a display filter (usually a bit easier) to only see the traffic you care about. Microsoft's Network monitor is a little easier to use than Wireshark. Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

Hi, I am just writing to check the status of this thread. Was the information that JM provided in previous reply helpful to you? Do you have any further questions or concerns? Please feel free to let us know. Alex Zhao TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.comPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Hi, As this thread has been quiet for a while, we assume that the issue has been resolved. At this time, we will mark it as ‘Answered’ as the previous steps should be helpful for many similar scenarios. If the issue still persists, please feel free to reply this post directly so we will be notified to follow it up. You can also choose to unmark the answer as you wish. BTW, we’d love to hear your feedback about the solution. By sharing your experience you can help other community members facing similar problems. Thanks for your understanding and efforts. Alex Zhao TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.comPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Alex Zhaozx & JM, Sorry for my late reply. It took this long time for me to look for and get the hub which is necessary to carry out suggestion by JM. I decided to use two of them and have just gotten the second one today. Since the hub is no longer available at retailers so I had to look for and get used ones. I have not been able to resolve the problem, but am pleased to post the progress as follows: I could spot the magic packet on the Wireshark at its sending end: What are shown under column header of "Source", "Destination", "Protocol", and "Info" tell me which one among many packets is the magic packet. The source IP is that of PC used for sending the magic packet, the destination IP is the global IP assigned to the router for the target PC. The info includes "Magic Packet for. . .", and Mac ID of the NIC used on the target PC. The protocol is shown as "WOL". So far so good, but what happend at the target side is as follows: I could not see local IP of the target PC under "Destination" header on the Wireshark. The router at the target LAN appears broadcasting ARP asking who has xxx.xxx.x.xxx where xxx.xxx.x.xxx is the local IP of the target PC. I tried the packet capture with the target PC turned on, then the packet captured is the same as that at the sending end except IPs under the headers of the "Source" and the "Destination" which are the global IP of the sending end and the local IP of the target PC respectively. It appears that the router at the target side is ignoring the MAC ID contained in the packet and is broadcasting ARP to get the MAC ID. Any further suggestion is appreciated.

If your computer is WOL capable and enabled, while the system is turned off, it should respond to a simply WOL packet which would have the destination IP address of the subnet broadcast address such as 192.168.1.255 and the MAC address of that specific computer. As long as your router is configured properly and the WOL application is sending a directed broadcast and the PC can work with that packet, you should be good to go. You may want to try some alternate connections such as setting up a vPN tunnel into your network first, to test whether your router can handle the NAT translation for this type of packet. I havent tried turning on PCs over the internet via NAT so I dont know if that is supported by the router, but I have set it up via a VPN connection. The previous suggestion with regard to the hubs and packet captuers was the only way I could advise as to helping you see if the packets are arriving and in what form. Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

Sorry for my late reply. I am still working on it. I have found a forum discussion sponsored by D-Link which is the vendor of the router I am using. The discussion is about WOL using D-Link DIR-655 router being my router. I think I followed what are said in the discussion but still no dice yet. I originally using port forwarding but now changed to the virtual server being a feature of this router, though I am still unable to make it work. The log file of this router appears to indicate that the router is blocking access from the public IP used for sending out the magic packet. I set up on the router, inbound filter for the public IP of the magic packet sender, then the remote PC could be turned on. BUT this is true only if the magic packet is transmitted within about 40 sec after the remote PC is turned off. Anyway, even though it works, this scheme is useless since I do not know in advance, from where I want to remotely turn on my PC at home. This is the update of my endeavour. Any comment is appreciated.

Sorry for my late reply. I am still working on it. I have found a forum discussion sponsored by D-Link which is the vendor of the router I am using. The discussion is about WOL using D-Link DIR-655 router being my router. I think I followed what are said in the discussion but still no dice yet. I originally using port forwarding but now changed to the virtual server being a feature of this router, though I am still unable to make it work. The log file of this router appears to indicate that the router is blocking access from the public IP used for sending out the magic packet. I set up on the router, inbound filter for the public IP of the magic packet sender, then the remote PC could be turned on. BUT this is true only if the magic packet is transmitted within about 40 sec after the remote PC is turned off. This is the update of my endeavour. Any comment is appreciated.

Hi, Thanks for update. I have read this discussion; according to your description, it seems that the configuration cannot work properly, try to update your firmware to the latest version. Meanwhile, please follow the instruction which mentioned in your link to check how it works: Wake On LAN (WOL) Guide Please Note: Since the website is not hosted by Microsoft, the link may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this information. Good luck. Alex Zhao TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.comPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Alex Zhao, I updated the firmware but to no avail. What I have done so far is the same as posted in the reference link except 1. and 6. I do not need 1. or setting up DDNS. 6. or Windows Firewall has nothing to do with my present problem of starting up a computer.

Hi, As JM said, if your router is configured properly and the WOL application is sending a properly broadcast and computer can receive the broadcast. Currently, based on your situation, I suggest you configure router properly, please keep in D-link forum for further help on this issue. They should be able to better address the issue and secure a solution. Good luck. Alex Zhao TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.comPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

JM & Alex; I participated in the D-Link users' forum and the Netgear users' forum. What I learned there so far is that the consumer grade routers just do not support WOL over the Internet. Possible solutions I learned are to get a business class router or replace firmware of a consumer grade router with the one called DD-WRT which allows not only turning on but also turning off remote pc, and is available free of charge. One workaround trick learned from the Netgear useers' forum is to use an always left on device and a hub. Since I have hub I jumped on this idea, tried it and confirmed the trick works. I used a webcam as the always-on-device. The webcam which is left on and the target PC which is turned off were connected to the hub. The port forwarding was done for the webcam. Then, the magic packet which includes MAC ID of the target PC's NIC is sent out. At the receiving end, the router follows the port forwarding instruction and redirected the Magic Packet to the webcam but when it goes through the hub it is also delivered to the target PC, thus the target PC is turned on. (The problem of consumer grade router is that it cannot redirect the packet to any device which is not turned on.) Since the webcam is usually left on when I leave home for extended period, the above is a viable solution. One more solution found is this. I got this info from MSFN forum and PROnetworks forum. This is always on device soley for the purpose of turning on or off remote pc over the Internet. It is available from Austria and consts about US $85.

Sounds good churin. In addition, don't disregard the VPN option. If you have a consumer grade router that supports a VPN connection, you should be able to get the WOL packets through. Again, it would need to be tested. However, is this solution would work, it would require you to first establish a VPN session. Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

Yes, that's what I am going to look into before concluding the endeavor. My present router does not support VPN so that my next round of work has to begin looking for the one which does. With VPN I am hoping that it may be possible to turn on as well as turn off the remote pc.