Vista - help with wake on lan

Hi,
I'm trying to set up wake on lan on my Vista PC. I've had a bit of success but still need some help. I have a magic packet sniffer set up on the PC to check if it is receiving packets. On my networked laptop I am trying to send magic packets. I'm using a wake on lan program from magicpacket.free.fr

So far I've sent packets using 4 different configurations:
1.
IP address (192.168.100.150)
subnet mask 255.255.255.255
port 9
mac address (xx-xx-xx-xx-xx)

2. IP address (192.168.100.150)
subnet mask 0.0.0.0
port 9
mac address

3. external IP address (66.183.50.30)
subnet mask 255.255.255.255
port 9
mac address

4. external IP address (66.183.30.50)
subnet mask 0.0.0.0
port 9
mac address

All four configuration send magic packets to the Vista PC which show up on the packet sniffer (I have port 9 forwarding to 192.168.100.150). However, only configurations 2 and 4 will actually wake up PC if it is sleeping. I don't understand why that would be case. This is important to me because in the end I want to use my linux NAS to send a magic packet to the Vista PC. However, the program that I have on the NAS for this purpose does not allow me to set the subnet mask. I suspect that it defaults to 255.255.255.255, because the NAS is unable to wake up the Vista PC (but when awake the Vista PC receives the packet just like all of the examples above).

thanks

My method for WOL with our Vista boxes at work:

Device Manager > Network Controller > Advanced > WakeOnLAN From PowerOFF > Enabled
Device Manager > Network Controller > Power Management > Allow the computer to turn off this device: unchecked
Device Manager > Network Controller > Power Management > Allow this device to wake the computer: checked


When I want to wake one, I simply ping it.

Granted, with this configuration, the occasional broadcast/icmp traffic will wake one up at random... but as long as that's not a big deal for you, the above should work just fine.

You ping it? That doesn't work for me.

My issue is rather strange in that 4 methods will send a magic packet to the Vista PC that is asleep, but only 2 of them will actually wake up the PC. I just don't get it.

Do you have any settings for what type of packet will wake it under the Device Manager's Advanced tab? I've seen some NIC's have an option for that. Otherwise, I'm not certain where you'd look.

Yes, I have the option for a magic packet and something else... gosh, I can't remember the name. I set the nic to wake from both the magic packet and x, but that didn't work for pinging. I'm a bit surprised by you mentioning the ping because I thought that wouldn't work for WOL? I thought that since the computer was sleeping, the router wouldn't know which computer has the destination IP address, and that is why magic packets are broadcasted across all of the network: every computer gets the packet and the NIC with the corresponding MAC address gets awoken. There's no doubt that I could be very wrong on this!

I still don't understand why the PC can receive magic packets from all 4 methods, but only awakes from 2. I have no idea on how/who to contact that would have good knowledge on this. It's a tricky problem.

cheers

Works fine for us - I just make sure that the systems are not allowed to power-down their NIC's. That keeps them active and listening.

It's also why, occasionally, broadcast traffic will cause one or more to wake up. But, otherwise, it's worked well for us.

Ah yes, makes sense. As well, maybe the router has an ARP table or something like that and it remembers which port is which NIC.

I managed to wake my PC from the internet today, so most of my WOL is working. My main stumbling block is the magic packet from my NAS does not wake the PC. It sends a packet though. I think I might now realize the problem. My router was forwarding port 9 (which I set for WOL) to port 9 on 192.168.1.150 (Vista PC). While the PC was awake, the packet was getting forwarded correctly via the IP address. However, once the PC was asleep the IP address was essentially useless. Today I changed the forwarding to port 9 on 192.168.1.255. This broadcasts the magic packet to all computers on the subnet.

I'm hoping the above works. I still don't know why some methods would work and some wouldn't, I would guess that the programs themselves differ in the broadcasting, thereby causing the issue.

I got things working.
I believe the issue was that some of the methods were broadcasting the magic packet, despite me using a specific IP address, and that worked. Other methods, such as the problem I had with my NAS, were sending the magic packet out to a specific IP. This of course didn't work for the reasons mentioned above, because when the PC is asleep the router is not aware of its IP address. I was getting confused because obviously some packets were broadcast and I didn't know it.

The main thing I had to do to fix this was change the port forwarding in my router. port 9 was forwarded to 192.168.1.150. I changed this to forward to 192.168.1.255. This effectively sends the magic packet to all devices and the one with the matching MAC address gets awoken.