Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2014 8:45 Post subject: Wake on WAN over a DD-WRT Client Bridge?
Hi all,
Hopefully someone here can shed some light on this issue as I was beating my head against the wall all evening last night with it!
Below is a (very scientific) diagram of my network at home.
Router 1 (connected to the modem) connected wirelessly to Router 2 which is running DD-WRT acting as a client bridge, hardwired to my PC in another room.
I'm trying to get my PC to wake from sleep to packets sent via the internet (Wake on WAN).
I have enabled the Wake on Lan settings in the PC BIOS. I've added an exception for UDP port 9 in windows firewall. I've port forwarded UDP port 9 on both routers to the PC internal static IP address, and i've been into my network adapters properties and enabled the required parts for WOL.
... PC just won't wake! Any ideas on where i've got wrong at all?
Thank you in advance! I'd love to get this working!
Okay, I'm going to assume that your WOL works fine via intranet and fails via internet.
The WOL packet is a broadcast packet. (i.e. 192.168.1.255). The reason is that once a device goes into S3 or S4 sleep, it no longer has an IP address. So, a properly sent WOL packet goes out to everything on the network (i.e. "broadcast") and any device with the correct MAC address gets the packet.
That being the case, the main issue that you're probably having is that the broadcast packet will typically get blocked by your firewall. This is a good thing as it's not good practice to allow broadcast packets through the firewall.
So, I recommend remotely connecting to your router and having your router issue the WOL command. You can do this through the GUI or via telnet/SSH. If you use telnet or SSH, you can create a connection with your favorite client (PuTTY ?) and have the WOL command sent upon connection.
I've got my WOL via internet down to a simple double-click of the an ssh connection that automatically sends the WOL packet.
Try the GUI method first. Once successful, look into telnet/ssh to make things faster.
I got this working through the GUI this morning, it was great!
However, I left the PC sleeping for an hour or so and now it won't wake...
I can still access the routers GUI over WAN, so I know there's no internet connection issue back home..
Odd how it was working, and now it isn't.
Any ideas?
Odd how it was working, and now it isn't.
Any ideas?
This is a pretty common WOL issue. Try googling sleep state defitions (i.e. S1 vs S2, S3, and S4). You'll get a better idea of why it wakes up after a short sleep and not always after a long sleep.
Typically, you'd issue the WOL command from your main router. Your setup suggests that the main one is not DD-WRT so I'm guessing you're doing it with the client bridge router, correct? I'm not sure if there's an issue with that approach, but it's a possible point of concern.
If you can get the computer to wake after a long sleep from within your LAN, then the problem lies in getting the proper WOL packet to your machine. If can't get it to wake from your LAN after a long sleep, you need to adjust the WOL settings on the computer itself.
Yeah, the problem is that my main router is in a different room, so can't be hardwired to my PC. Which is why I thought a client bridge setup would be a way around it.
I'll see if it wakes from the LAN when I get home.
You may want to consider putting a wifi card in the computer, setting the computer to not remove power from the card and doing away with the bridge.
I disagree. Keeping power to the NIC doesn't necessarily mean it'll keep itself connected to the network. In fact, it's very possible it will not stay connected if the rest of the computer is powered down. Using the client bridge seems more stable to me... although still not as good as a wire, obviously.