WoL only working when I’m home.

Noozee · April 20

So I have wake on lan enabled on my windows 11 dell pc, i use Wolow on my phone to turn it on and want to be able to turn it on when in not home because i also use it as a game server. Here is the thing, when i am connected to my home Wi-Fi and try to wake the pc it works fine but when i use my 4g and try it it doesn’t work what kind of defeats the purpose of WoL. I’ve tried putting my external IP address in Wolow but that doesn’t work. Anyone know how to fix this?

johnt · April 20

Your phone has to be connected to your home network in order for WOL to function. You would have to self host a VPN service and log into your own network when you are on 4g or away from home for WOL to work.

The IP address thing might work but you probably have to open/forward ports in your router. I do not recommend this without secure software listening for that port and processing your request behind a basic log in. Otherwise, everybody in this world will be able to turn on your PC.

Eigenvektor · April 20

38 minutes ago, Noozee said:

I’ve tried putting my external IP address in Wolow but that doesn’t work. Anyone know how to fix this?

Your external IP address belongs to your router, not the PC behind it.

As far as I'm aware WOL packages are not internet routable. So port forwarding alone is not going to solve it.

As was said above, you'll need to set up a VPN to virtually connect your phone to your internal network when out of your home. Then you should be able to wake the PC.

Of course that means you need something that is always on and can work as a VPN server. Best case, your ISP's router supports that. Worst case you could set up something like OpenVPN on a RasPi type device.