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[R.G.]

I have a DIR-655 that I'm otherwise frenetically happy with. It was only recently that I needed to get a WOL going.

I want WOL to work only on my internal LAN, not from the internet. I've tried pretty much every possible combination of settings I could think of (and I'm not a total newbie at this kind of thing) as well as doing all the searching I could on this forum and others.

My setup is:
Hardware Version B1
Firmware Version 2.00NA
Incoming IP is static, although I can't find that it matters and don't want it to be involved.
Router Settings:
Router IP: 192.168.0.1
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.128
DHCP enabled
DHCP range 192.168.0.2 to 192.168.0.126 (which should make 192.168.0.127 the broadcast address, best I can glean from the net)
Under Advanced, Virtual Servers List:
Name: Wake-On-Lan, copied from the application names drop down
IP address 192.168.0.127 (although I only want one machine to wake, and have tried that machine's address here)
Public and Private Port: tried both 7 and 9 for both
Protocol: tried "both", TCP, UDP, but not "other"
Schedule = Always
Inbound Filter = Allow All

I'm typing this from the router setup pages in another panel, didn't want to mess with taking pictures and posting them.

I have tried several local magic packet senders. Most recently "WakeOnLANSender" and a couple of others. I have tried a couple of listeners, including downloading and running Wireshark, which was tough to learn for this topic, but I was never able to find a packet that looked like a magic packet to *any* machine on the net, although there was the usual bewildering array of other packets.

Near as I can tell, the packet is never getting routed back out, which is why I've dug into the morass on the router.

What I'm really hoping for is someone to tell me "Smack yourself in the forehead, you need to set up XXXYYY like this". I'd settle for " Oh, that's a known problem with your firmware (although I've seen several glib notes that it works fine with this hardware and firmware), you need up update/downdate to ZZZQQQ."

I'd be unhappy, but at least completed with the task if someone could verify that this piece of... um, hardware  simply can't do it in spite of the notes to the contrary on the net and this forum.

I'm holding off on removing the router, torturing it with the cutting torch and then pounding its dead remains in to a fine powder to sprinkle at the crossroads at midnight, at least for the moment.    

[FurryNutz]

There are some WOL located in the new FAQ Library. Might do a search there.

[R.G.]

As I mentioned, I searched extensively. The current settings are the result of that search, including the FAQ library.

It could be that the answer is there and I missed it, but I tried most things suggested there over the last few days. I'm down to (1) appeal to a helpful human who might recognize the issue, possibly based on some insightful questions or (2) use the torch-and-hammer resolution process and find a different router.

So -yeah, tried that. No help I could find. Near as I can tell, the entries mostly start with "WOL works fine from inside my local subnet, but I want to WOL from the wild, wide internet", which is frustrating, as that starts where I can't get.

Ooops. My frustration is showing. I've done a lot of dinking with computers, and I'm well aware of the subtlety of hidden or non-obvious settings, in the best tradition of having to set up a virtual servers list to get port forwarding from the outside to work. 

[R.G.]

I've done several hours of monitoring with several WOL listeners, and with Wireshark. Near as I can tell, the packet sender thinks its sent the magic packet, but it's never present out on the larger wires. I've done this both from the machine that's listening and from another machine on the same subnet.

I've got to conclude that the router is not sending the packet out, or is swallowing it in some way.

Any insights?

[FurryNutz]

What happens if you install a Gb Network switch between the router and PCs...?

[R.G.]

No difference. There are two GB switches in the house net, one at the router in the attic and one locally in the computer room. I have tried sniffing the net after one and both switches, and moving the router right to the machines sending packets. It's equally silent in each position; no magic packets.

I have found issues with a couple of the "send wake on lan" programs - I've tried four of them now - and so I'm still beating on the issue.

Given Wireshark's sterling reputation, and the firehose of packets it does detect, I'm using it as the gold standard for what packets are there. You have to trust something.

[motherfo]

Have you looked at my WOL Guide?

http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=37018.0

The gold standard for WOL utilities and testing is Depicus. 

He has sniffers and Windows utilities and more.


First of all, does your motherboard even support it?  Are the power settings in the bios setup correctly? Can you post your motherboard model?  Have you verified the Lan Driver settings in device manager as stated in my guide?

Why are you running that Subnet Mask vs the standard?  Have you checked Windows Firewall or turned it off?  Do you have any other 3rd party firewall software running in the background, Zonealarm, McAfee, Norton, etc.


The problem with WOL is often not Wake On Lan or the Router itself, it's often one of the items above.  I understand your frustration, but sometimes it is best to take a day, rest up, and come back to it.

[R.G.]

Have you looked at my WOL Guide?

No, but I will. I'm in sponge mode now.     I'm a lot further on than I was at last post.

And I should mention that I can now get some WOL packets generated and broadcast through the router; the critical elements seem to be the router's willingness to accept broadcast packets. It does this for 255.255.255.255 from inside the subnet, but is picky about what it will broadcast from the magic packet applications. It seems to take both the setting of the DHCP ranges and a broadcast packet one less than the maximum DHCP range to get an internal broadcast propagated. (I'm trying to do this without going through learning all the various protocols on the net)

The gold standard for WOL utilities and testing is Depicus. He has sniffers and Windows utilities and more.

I have found those but not tried them yet. I'm up on Wireshark enough now to find packets. It was a full two days to graft that on, but it's now working. I see all the packet traffic and can analyze it. There is another issue lurking in that the sending machines are running on Win7 and Win7 requires setting special compatibility for them to let them actually put magic packets on the subnet, even though they echo to their "listeners" just fine on the sending machine.

First of all, does your motherboard even support it? 

Yes.

Are the power settings in the bios setup correctly?

Yes.

Can you post your motherboard model?

Yes. It's an ASUS M5A97 R2. The manufacturer is explicit about being able to wake on lan, the bios has settings for wake on PME event, and anecdotal evidence suggests that others are successful on this. There is some question about how reliably the Realtek 8111F chipset on the motherboard supports WOL, but I have tried both that and the Intel Pro/1000 GT NIC.

Have you verified the Lan Driver settings in device manager as stated in my guide?

The target is not a Windows machine, it's a FreeBSD/FreeNAS machine, so the LAN driver advice for Windowns won't help. I have burrowed into FreeBSD enough to find that the LAN driver shows WOL and WOL magic packets are available for both the RT8111F and Intel chipsets, and that they are enabled for the NIC when testing.

Why are you running that Subnet Mask vs the standard?

 
I've tried the standards and the modified ones. As I mentioned, using a DHCP range and subnet mask as I mentioned now seems to let magic packets get out on the subnet. I tried that based on some exhaustive (literally) research on networking and DHCP.

Have you checked Windows Firewall or turned it off?

 
It's off.

Do you have any other 3rd party firewall software running in the background, Zonealarm, McAfee, Norton, etc.

One of the first issues I suspect when nothing happens on a net is the firewall. I use Zonealarm, and have tried it both ways, completely off and on. As I mentioned above, I'm now getting broadcasts to the subnet. This actually happens both ways, so zonealarm is not a player, at least with the medium security settings I'm using on the trusted subnet.

The problem with WOL is often not Wake On Lan or the Router itself, it's often one of the items above.  I understand your frustration, but sometimes it is best to take a day, rest up, and come back to it.

Thanks for the commentary, the on-point questions, and the willingness to help.

I actually wrote up a condensed version of my findings and posted it on the FreeNAS forum; I've tried to get that link, but the forum is undergoing some maintenance right now. You might be able to find that here:
http://forums.freenas.org/threads/wake-on-lan-wol-why-it-works-why-it-doesnt-and-frustration.18354/ when the forum wakes back up. It's about three text pages of synopsis of what I've found so far.

The bottom line is that I have now learned enough to understand that yes, as you say, the problem with Wake on Lan is not the router necessarily; it's that WOL may best be understood as a form of elaborate game, where you have to have the right hardware in the motherboard, NIC, router - and oddly enough, power supply! -  the right firmware in each of these, the right settings in the firmware, a willing and properly set up OS (including device drivers), and the right sending/listening software and OS permissions, and the right firewall settings. All of these have to be correct to get WOL to work.

I have all but satisfied myself that the DIR655 is working fine; that will come when I actually get a WOL boot, but now that I can use a packet sniffer to find magic packets, I think the problem lies in other places than the router now, but until I get reliable magic packets with the right frame contents for the intended target machine (and I'm close) I can't actually punch that ticket. It's been a busy few days.

[motherfo]

Alrighty, so from what I've read, FreeBSD/Nas may be the problem in the first place.

Here is a link about the bios setting specific to your board:
http://superuser.com/questions/339416/wol-for-asus-m5a97-built-in-realtek-network-adapter

There's a good chance you've seen these next few links already, but here goes:

People saying it isn't supported then someone posting a patch: http://forums.freenas.org/threads/wake-on-lan.13508/

Same, guy solves it in last post: https://forums.freebsd.org/viewtopic.php?&t=37930

Old guide: http://linux-bsd-sharing.blogspot.com/2012/06/howto-enable-wake-on-lan-on-freebsd.html

Another very helpful guide: http://lordandhooks.com/index.php/blog/the-ultimate-wake-on-lan-guide/



One way to rule out if it's the router would be to setup a windows machine and try waking that.  That way you can at least verify it works over the network.

Given that you are using FreeNas I'm not going to be much help.  To me, it sounds like an issue with the machine and not the router itself, especially since Wireshark is seeing the packets.

Keep us posted though!

[FurryNutz]

I recommend that if you post links here in the forums, to make it easier for users to select them, make them hyperlinks please. Use the Insert Hyperlinker icon, 2nd row down, 3rd icon over above the emoticons for your URLs. 

[motherfo]

I recommend that if you post links here in the forums, to make it easier for users to select them, make them hyperlinks please. Use the Insert Hyperlinker icon, 2nd row down, 3rd icon over above the emoticons for your URLs. 

Done.

[R.G.]

Alrighty, so from what I've read, FreeBSD/Nas may be the problem in the first place.

Maybe. However, setting up FreeBSD/FreeNAS correctly is where I started the research. I dug as deeply into getting that to work, with details of specifics - hardware, setup, releases, and diagnostics - as I did the router. In fact, I came to question the router only after I had pounded the OS and its setup in great depth.

Here is a link about the bios setting specific to your board:
http://superuser.com/questions/339416/wol-for-asus-m5a97-built-in-realtek-network-adapter

Yep, been there. That was one of the data points I pounded while messing with the OS setup.

There's a good chance you've seen these next few links already, but here goes:

Yes, I've been there; but thanks for the additional research. That's the kind of thing that will eventually solve this, or give me the clue.

One way to rule out if it's the router would be to setup a windows machine and try waking that.  That way you can at least verify it works over the network.

I thought about that, but once I could get properly formed magic packets for *some* machine detectable on the subnet, I reasoned that I could save the additional time getting another OS running with WOL.

Given that you are using FreeNas I'm not going to be much help.  To me, it sounds like an issue with the machine and not the router itself, especially since Wireshark is seeing the packets.

Probably so.

I've come to a much fuller understanding of WOL issues. It's fairly amazing that it works at all. Here are some of the underlying requirements for it to work that are not apparent.
- The power supply in your machine has to have +5 standby, and have to have enough of it to keep the portion of the motherboard that's involved in wake up alive, as well as enough to keep the NI and NIC if any, alive to see the magic packet. The Intel card included the note that (roughly) "your power supply must provide at least 1A of +5V Standby power to support Wake On LAN". Most power supplies these days do, but it's a hard requirement that can negate all further work if not satisfied. A quick-and-dirty indicator if this is happening is if the external LED on the NI port is lit when the machine is down.
- The motherboard chip sets must support keeping the NI chips alive if the on-motherboard NI is used, and must support a WOL or PME wake up. Further the motherboard must actually have traces or wire connectors from the NI or NIC to allow the WOL signal to be pulled. If that wire's not there, it ain't gonna wake. This is why NICs and motherboards used to have plug-in connectors for this process. It's now in the PCI and PCIe busses.
- The BIOS must support configuring WOL.
- The OS must support leaving the NI or NIC in a WOL-ready state.
- Connection must be wired, not wireless. Wireless packets are not correct format in some fashion I didn't dig to the bottom of, as it's not what I want to do anyway.
- The router must actually send usable magic packets to the machine. This was a hidden sleeper after I dug through a lot of the others, and how I came to post here. It was apparently not working, but I find now for other reasons.
- The magic packets *may* be rifle shots to the specific MAC or IP address, but this only works until the shutdown machine falls out of the ARP table. Some routers support static DHCP addresses to keep it in the ARP table, but it is by no means certain. Broadcast addresses are the right way to do this to be sure the shutdown machine gets its packet. This requires setting up the router to receive broadcast requests and actually send the broadcast, which is a big issue for packets from the internet, but not for packets already sent on the desired subnet.
- Broadcast packets already on the subnet need to be sent to a broadcast address that the router will actually broadcast. This is somewhat interactive between the magic packet sender software and the router's DHCP setup. It's why I posted the issue with DHCP reservations and sending to n.n.n.127. This may not be an issue for the default broadcast address when purely within the subnet. Not sure on this one. But I do get packets now.
- The sender software has to actually make magic packets, and these have to get through the sender machine's OS to the wires. This runs into compatibility issues on Windows 7 with some senders.
- To do any useful debug, you have to be able to detect packets, and the free WOL software is inconsistent about whether it tells you what's on the wire versus inside the sending machine.

I've fought my way through that stuff, and I think I now need to go back to the the target OS setup. As I said, I now believe the DIR-655 is innocent, at least with my current knowledge of the setup.

By the way, I want to issue some explicit thanks for all of you who've taken the time to reply here. Education is always worthwhile to me, and you've helped. I'll be back when I have either success or more data/questions on the router.

[R.G.]

I have now verified that the DIR-655 is indeed sending out magic packets. That part works fine. I can see the magic packets on both Wireshark and the target device.

... but it still doesn't wake up.