G+_Jason Wong (Jayce W.) Posted April 3, 2014 Share Posted April 3, 2014 My $200 Ultrabook or How I Learned to Love WOL Well, not technically an Ultrabook, but my idea was to get a $200 Chromebook and use Chrome Remote Desktop to connect my Core i5 tower and have the all the power of the desktop with the portability of a netbook. Other cloud services would have to be utilized (Google Drive & Dropbox for storage, Google Cloud Print for printing, etc.), and both machines must be online, of course. Everything was factored in, but I knew a potential hiccup would be trying to save power by not having the desktop on all the time and turning it on only when I need it. Well, if you're operating miles away from home, you can't exactly reach out and press the power button. That's where good old Wake On LAN came to play. Wake On LAN (WOL for short) is a feature found on most computers that many people don't know about. Basically, if WOL is enabled, the network card will react to an incoming command that tells the computer to "wake up" if it is in sleep mode (and sometimes in full shutdown mode). For security purposes, this special command (called the magic packet) must contain the unique MAC address of the network card. Usually, WOL must be enabled within the BIOS of the computer and modifying settings of the network card. Here are some good instructions on how to do that: http://windows7-issues.blogspot.com/2011/03/wake-on-lan-wol-for-windows-7-made-easy.html So that's all well and good if you're on the local network and you want to wake the computer up, but what about when you are outside of the network? That's where port forwarding comes in, right? You would think that all you have to do is forward port 9 (used for WOL purposes) to the desktop computer's static IP address and that would be enough. Well, all seemed fine at first. Right after I put my desktop computer to sleep, I was able to wake it up with an iPhone app called SimpleWOL (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/simplewol/id492554872?mt=8). I was even able to go on the AT&T network and wake up the computer! It got me pretty excited... until I tried it again after a certain duration of sleep. It did not work. I tried adjusting many settings on the network card, but to no avail. It was quite frustrating too, since I didn't know how long it would take for me not to be able to wake the computer up, and I wasn't keen on waiting various lengths of time to experiment. After doing some research, I found out that it was the limitation of the router that was not allowing me to use WOL. To put it simply, when the computer sleeps the network card is no longer visible to the router and the router eventually forgets where to send the magic packet. That's why I was able to use WOL, but only right after making the computer sleep. The actual method for using WOL is to send the magic packet out as a broadcast to the entire network (again, it will only wake up the computer with the matching MAC address). So, fine and good... but how do I send the magic packet to the entire network when my Linksys router will only allow me to forward it to one IP address? I know that some routers will allow you to send it to an IP address ending in .255, which is the broadcast address. Unfortunately, my router isn't so helpful. I knew that I could port-forward to a broadcast address with a DD-WRT router, but I wasn't ready yet to flash DD-WRT onto my main router. I had done so already to an old Linksys and it was quite a long and involved process. BUT, that's where I hit upon the solution! The DD-WRT router that I was using as a wireless bridge for my Sony Blu-Ray has a built-in WOL utility in the administration console! I can log into the console and wake the desktop computer up on a consistent basis! However, I still had to have the ability to do this outside my network. Well, it was back to port-forwarding on my main router... I had to be able to log into the secondary DD-WRT router in order to send the magic packet. And since my ISP does not allow web servers by blocking port 80, I actually had to use port-translation. (I also have to use DynDNS since I don't have a static IP address from my ISP). So after two all-nighters, I'm finally able wake my computer up from outside my network and use it with my thin client of a Chromebook. Now, to go to sleep myself... don't send me a magic packet! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Micah Holtzinger Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 Cool story! Like the idea. My son uses the Acer 720 for his schoolwork. This is a cool way to have but a cheap ultralight computer and a powerful one at your fingertips. Kudos! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Warren Alexis (Christop Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 Very nice. I would just leave my desktop computer on 24/7 and setup the WOL as a backup just in case. Question.. do you know if WOL works if the NIC is wireless? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Wong (Jayce W.) Posted April 4, 2014 Author Share Posted April 4, 2014 Warren Alexis No, WOL is for wired connections. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Scot McSweeney-Roberts Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 Warren Alexis There is something called "Wake on Wireless LAN" (though it's not as standard as the wired WOL, so YMMV). Here's one How To on it http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/turn-on-your-pc-with-android-device-via-wifi-network-wowlan/ And if you google it there are plenty more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Kempa Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 That's a great idea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Gerardo Armendariz Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 Great summary Jason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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