Wake On Lan?

[Jowl]

A Native Wake On Lan app would be just great for me. Turn my PC on so it's ready for when I get upstairs.

more importantly, turn on my fileserver machine readay to view my stored DVD's via the Mac Mini.

Any developers out there planning this? Is it possible? (As long as the SDK lets you send a majic packet via the network interface, I see no reason why not)

 

[TonyHoyle]

I don't believe you can send WOL via Wifi, since it has to be sent within the same network segment.

You could have an app running on a running machine (or even the router) that relayed the request.. but that's more complex to implement as it's two different bits of code.

 

[BobF4321]

I don't believe you can send WOL via Wifi, since it has to be sent within the same network segment.

Most cable/dsl wireless routers assign IP addresses in the same subnet to both wireless and wired clients, so my guess is that it should be possible as long as there is only one router involved.

 

[Jowl]

I have definatley sent a successful WOL command over wireless from my Macbook to wired PC/Mac computers.

There was iWol for jailbroken phoens I believe. I'm hoping that the iPhone SDK allows WOL sending and some clever developer could create a program.

I would love to get back into programming and create it myself.

 

[ViViDboarder]

This would be really nice with the VPN working Combine a wake program with VPN and VNC or SSH and you'll have some nice server management tools in the palm of your hand.

Alternatively, if you just want it on when you walk in your house, you can try a computer near your entry way that's always on listening to bluetooth for your phone. When sensed it'd auto send a WOL signal to your desktop to boot it. Fully automated.

 

[Jowl]

Finally! Not downloaded it yet but...

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=286546049&mt=8

Website: http://www.perculasoft.com/sleepover/

 

[supercooled]

I apologize for meandering a little but can someone point me to the resource of setting up WoN?

I have a Mac Mini as a media server but I don't access the files all that often and would like to leave it off until I need it; rather than having it on all the time or even standby, I would like it to set on Wake-on-Lan which if my understanding is correct can have a machine in total shutdown mode and still be awoken via that magic packet call.

Is this more or less correct?

 

[Jowl]

That works in the windows (and I assume Linux?) world but it seems that Apple hardware will not do that! Believe me, I've tried and googled everything I can.

The plus side is that Mac hardware tends to use very little power in sleep mode - at least the Mac Mini does.

And I have now downloaded SleepOver now and can confirm it works fine over the LAN - not tried over the internet yet.

 

[gambcl]

Hi Jowl,

I am the author of SleepOver, thanks for the interest.

If you have any problems getting the wake-over-Internet working I have now added some
troubleshooting tips to the website. Please get in touch if you have any problems.

If you do get it working it would be great if you could fill in the Report Router
form (linked to on the support page). I am trying to build up a list of routers
which *will* allow wake-over-Internet to work, as there are so many which do not allow it.

The idea is to have a central place where people can look to see if their router (or one they
are about to buy) has been used successfully.

I use a D-Link but it only works for a short while before the ARP cache times out and it doesn't
seem to have any way to specify a permanent static ARP mapping. So I've just bought a Linksys
model which is compatible with DD-WRT, which I hope to test this week sometime.

Anyway, hope it works out for you,

gambcl

 

[Jowl]

Hi,

First of all, thanks for a great App!

I will leave feedback over on your site asap. As of yet, I cannot get the WOL over internet to work. I did manage it once through a website but cannot repeat it via the web or your app. I did read something about ARP and the ARP table for my router - I will try that!

However, LAN works wonderfully well. If only Apple would allow booting from 'off' *sigh*

My only gripe so far is the way that you enter the Mac address and the IP address - it would be *much* quicker using just a keypad rather than the current method.

Thanks

J

 

[gambcl]

Hi Jowl,

Glad you're enjoying it.

If you manage to wake your target machine once over Internet but then it stops
waking, try rebooting your target and see if it starts waking again. If it does
it will probably only work for a short time and you have the same problem I do
with my router. The ARP cache entry for your target host times out and then the
router tries to do an ARP request to your target next time a magic packet arrives
and of course it doesn't receive a response because it's asleep so it doesn't
deliver the magic packet.

I'm afraid there is nothing SleepOver or any other wake application or website
can do in this situation. If you're lucky you might be able to telnet into
your router and use the arp command to setup a static entry.

Try "telnet <router-ip>" if it asks for user/pass, use whatever you use on the web
interface. Then try "arp help" and see if the arp command supports the "-s" option,
I have seen some routers support this for adding static entries.

Point taken about the data entry method, I might have got carried away with the cool
slider things ;-)

I will seriously think about changing it to numeric keypad for the 1.1 release,
but my thoughts were that once you have entered the data once, hopefully you don't
have to mess with it too much.

gambcl

 

[Jowl]

I have got Wake over the Internet to work.....but I seem to have the same 'arp' issue. With my current router (Thomson) that was supplied by my ISP, I cannot telnet in and change the table. I will try and get my old netgear out and see if I have any luck with that. Forwarding UDP ports to the broadcast address didn't seem to work either.

I take your point about once the data is entered it's not often you'll change it. Perhaps it would be easier if you could also slide 'backwards' (ie go from 0 back to 255, 255 down to etc) I do think that a normal keypad would be easier though.

 

[Jowl]

Well, it seems I have succesfully got Wake over Internet working!

I had to telnet into my router and manually add an ARP address (which in fact made it 'static' rather than 'dynamic'.) I also set the computer I wanted to to wake up to a Static IP address. I will play around with the broadcast address and there seems to be an option to 'always allocate same address' in the DHCP server.

Edit: I've sent a 'router report' with the steps I made on your website.

 

[gambcl]

Great work.

To check that it really is a static mapping, you could try leaving your machine asleep for a few hours and then try to wake it over internet and see if it still works.

Thanks for the router report, first one so far!!!

I will make the router list page later this week when I have tested my new Linksys with the latest DD-WRT firmware on it.

Glad you got it all working.

gambcl

 

[Jowl]

So far I've left it for around 45 minutes.

The first time I did this - with 'Dynamic' arp it failed to Wake over Internet when I tried again.

The second time i tried - after creating a static arp entry, it worked.

Will try again in the morning now!

Thanks again for a cool app. I look forward to DynamicDNS in the next update. Would it also be possible to move computers into Groups?

eg 'Work' Would contain the 3 computers in my office
'home' would be my home computers.

possibly even 'wake group' (over LAN)

just a feature suggestion for a future version.

Edit: By the way, the machine I was waking over LAN and internet was a self-built windows PC. I will try the Mac later.

 

[gambcl]

Looks like you're on a winner with that router!

The Mac should wake just fine too, you should just need another static mapping, and you might need to use a different incoming port number so that you can setup another port-forwarding rule I guess.

I will make a note of the groups feature for a future release, but it probably wont make it into 1.1.

Great to hear you got it all working. If you can spare a minute, a review in the AppStore from someone who actually knows what wake-on-LAN is would be very much appreciated

Thanks,

gambcl

 

[Jowl]

So, woke up this morning (just, it was 11am ), reached over to my iPhone and woke my main PC over the internet. By the time I'd poured a cup of coffee, the PC was waiting for me. Success

Today I will try:

Adding another computer (Mac) on a different port number
Adding a static route to the broadcast address

Oh, and I subnmitted a App store review last night - should hopefully bump the average rating up a bit!

 

[Rigby]

Warning! This app will make you fat and lazy! In combination with Remote I can now switch on my server and stream music all around the house via Airport Express without running upstairs to the computer all the time.

But seriously, very useful app. Just does what it's supposed to do. My only small criticism is the method for entering the MAC and IP addresses. Takes a lot of spinning. A keypad would probably be easier.

 

[gambcl]

Hi Rigby,

You'll be glad to know that I'll be changing the sliders to keypads in the next release.

Thanks for your interest in SleepOver.

gambcl

 

[Warped1]

I just purchased this after seeing it here. I clicked too soon The app does not support name resolution. I wanted this to specifically wake up my server over the internet (which I do from a web site now for free). My IP address will change over time and is updated with no-ip.org.

The same can be said for internal network entries. I use DHCP at home on some machines so this thing is useless. Hopefully the dev updates this.

 

[Warped1]

Okay, there is a small blurb in the app description that states DynamicDNS support coming soon. Thats a fancy way of saying hostnames will be supported. Something so basic should have been included from the start.

I read the 'works over the internet' bullet and bought it too soon. Hopefully an update is close.

 

[gambcl]

Hi Warped1,

Thanks for your feedback.

As you have seen, hostname support is coming soon.
It will only be used for waking over internet though. As for your internal DHCP hosts, you should be setting up your DHCP server to allocate fixed IP addresses for them if you want to wake them.

gambcl

 

[Rigby]

As you have seen, hostname support is coming soon.
It will only be used for waking over internet though. As for your internal DHCP hosts, you should be setting up your DHCP server to allocate fixed IP addresses for them if you want to wake them.

Hm, while I agree that this is a likely scenario for most small and home networks, I could easily imagine cases where using host names could be useful on the LAN as well (e.g. in a larger lab where you cannot easily reconfigure everything just for WOL). Also, why would you want to restrict DNS lookup to one mode only? Wouldn't it even be easier to treat both modes the same? In the end, it shouldn't involve more than allowing hostnames to be entered in addition to IP addresses and adding a gethostbyname() (or whatever it's equivalent is in the iPhone OS), or?

 

[gambcl]

Hi Rigby,

OK, point taken. I will allow hostname support for LAN as well.

I am planning to add a text field for the hostname, and then when it comes time
to send the magic packet, if a hostname has been specified it will do a lookup
and use that, otherwise if no hostname is given it will use the specified IP
address as it does now.

I am also planning to hide the port number for LAN wakes as it is not required,
and hide the subnet mask for internet wakes, because hostname/IP should be enough.

Hopefully this (along with replacing the sliders with keypads) will streamline the
user interface and make it easier to use.

gambcl

 

[Warped1]

It's great to hear top notch support comes with my purchase and you are going to make needed changes. I will update my app store review to reflect the changes once implemented. Thanks!