Wake on Lan from Internet help please

BarGin

I have been trying to set my computer to wake from sleep remotely all evening without success. I can make it work over my local lan but trying to configure my router to allow me to do it from elsewhere is driving me potty.

The router a Billion 7800N. The computer is a Mac Mini with Windows 7 running in Boot Camp. I have tried waking the machine from sleep in both Win 7 and Snow Leopard without success in either.

I understand I have to forward Port 9 to the Mac address of the computer. I have tried doing this in both the port forwarding and firewall settings and have now run out of ideas.

Any help much appreciated.

P.S. I can wake the computer using the wake-up button in the router's Wake On Lan section but that doesn't seem to affect remote usage.

steve1980

Out of interest, why are you running W7 on a Mac?

BarGin

steve1980 wrote: »

Out of interest, why are you running W7 on a Mac?

I'm using my large TV as a monitor with Media Centre and I prefer it to anything the Mac has to offer. I just like Apple hardware.

esuhl

I don't use WOL myself, but I seem to remember reading that the "magic packet" that is sent to turn the PC on isn't usually forwarded by routers, so WOL (usually) only works across a LAN.

I think there are web sites that can somehow work around this though. Some of the links here look promising...

BarGin

I'm still trying to solve this. Is there anyone on this evening who can help?

TimothyEBaldwin

You need to either forward to the broadcast address, or set a static ARP table entry.

If the netmask of your LAN is 255.255.255.0, the the broadcast address is aaa.bbb.ccc.255 where aaa.bbb.ccc is the start of IP addresses on the LAN.

Lil306

This any help ?

http://www.ezlan.net/WOL.html

BarGin

Thanks for the help. I got it sorted in the end after setting up a fixed internal ip address and a static arp (I've still no idea what that was!).

I wanted to use wol along with the Audiogalaxy helper (used for streaming my pc music to my iphone) but unfortunately this stops the machine from going to sleep in the first place! I hoped the machine would go to sleep when Audiogalaxy was not being used and I would be able to wake it with a magic packet.

bbuckle

ARP, in simple terms, is used to find the MAC address of a system when only the IP address is known.

LAN communication is Ethernet based, meaning that data uses MAC addressing. It's only when data is destined for remote systems that TCP/IP is used. It works in exactly the same way for data coming into a system. Only the IP address is known, but the data needs to be routed to a system using its MAC address.

Usually an ARP request is sent, and at that point a router will cache that information. I suppose setting up the ARP information manually saves the router having to store the information (I'd imagine you had to enter the IP and MAC address of the system you wanted to wake up).

Hopefully that helps explain what ARP is and gives you an insight into why it is used in your case

BarGin

Thanks bbuckle, I sort of understand now.

Just in case anybody was interested, I solved my problem by using ZumoCast instead of Audiogalaxy. This program has a preference setting which will allow the computer to sleep.