Setting up a PC so you can run it over the internet.
I put this together and posted elsewhere so thought I'd also put it here for peeps to have a play with as well as I find it very useful when out and about.
First thing is to enable the wake on lan feature in your PC's BIOS... literally all PC's have this feature installed these days. This feature may well also come under other BIOS options such as in the APM power settings, for example, the ASUS MB's I use have the feature 'power on by pci/pcie and onboard lan' option.
This isn't the same as wake on ring which is designed for the old type analogue modems.
Once you've done that, check that when you switch PC off, you still have an active connection light with your NIC interface. Obviously, the PC will have to have a live power feed going into the PSU!
Next is to note down a few things.. first is the MAC address of your NIC in the pc you want to control. Easiest way is to run something like 'ipconfig /all' in a dos box within windows.
This will list your NIC MAC address, along with it's currently assigned LAN IP.. write them down.
Next thing is to go into your routers config and make a few changes - All routers vary in what you can and can't do, but most cover what's needed to get this working. Log into your routers config page (check the manual/google it if you don't know this bit) and take a look at the router status; this is where it should show you the router is connected to the internet, along with the modems I.P and subnet used. Note these down. Note that the modems IP is the WAN IP you will use to connect to the PC, and is NOT a local IP (such as 192.168.1.1 for example).
This is a pic of my routers status page:
Again, within your routers config, look for the option of allocating a particular LAN IP to a particular PC, and even better, bind it if possible. MAC binding simply means to allocate an IP to one specific MAC address (in this case, the MAC addy we noted using ipconfig /all command in windows on the PC we want to control). If binding isn't an option, just allocate a constant IP to the PC, this 'should' stop the router dishing it out to any other PC if the one we're interested in is switched off.
This is what I've done on one here:
Now, another thing to set up in the routers config is port forwarding. Most, if not all, modern routers are what's known as NAT capabable, this basically means it will ignore packets from the internet if they were not requested from an internal IP (that is, unless a PC on your LAN segment sent a packet, the router will ignore any packets to it from the WWW). To allow circumstances such as remote access, you have to set up certain ports within the router to actually allow this sort of data onto your network. There are different types of packets and software apps will use either UDP or TCP protocols, so if possibe, for ease, in your routers config page, enable both of these.
This is an example of one:
A note on routers and some problems I've encountered with people attempting to set this sort of thing up:
Routers generally 'lease' a connection to a PC on the LAN (if you look in the second pic above, you'll see this in the DHCP listing); that is, when you power up a PC, the router will allocate an IP to it and register that IP against that PC for a period of time (most I've looked at are at the 24 hour lease period). What this means is that the PC is registered into the routers IP table for that period of time, and this shouldn't disappear even if you switch the PC off. IF you don't power the PC up again within 24 hours (in this example) or the router is reset, the NIC connection is lost and trying to wake it up over the internet will probably not work. This is usually the first thing I look into when dealing with dead connections so it's worth noting! To avoid this, check your routers lease time, and if you're away from the PC longer than this, just try and make sure you connect remotely within it's lease time.. this will/should restart the lease period (again, depends on your router).
That's the router done and information needed put in.
Now, the APPS needed are a remote control app, I use teamviewer as it's free, and also a util to invoke the wake over the internet: the good thing is, they're both free
WOL gui (no need to fill anything in, just hit the download now button).. it also has links to WOL for some pocket PC devices.
Teamviewer
A couple of considerations on using these apps for the first time...
You have to put in the MAC address of the PC you want to control (Which you gleaned from ipconfig /all) and also the IP of your modem along with it's subnet mask which you noted from the routers status page. When I first used the WOL app, the IP it said it was sending data to was actually a little different than the one I'd input into the box,
I found that changing the last octet of the actual subnet I had noted down to .255 worked and it sent the right info then, may also work with you.
With the Wake on Lan app, test it using the option local subnet on the local LAN first! This should confirm if you have set up the PC's wake on Lan feature correctly before you try it over an internet connection (WAN).
With the teamviewer app, select the advanced option on initial install: this will allow you to set it up so it will run when windows on the PC you want to control starts, allows you set a password rather than have to use a session password and also, if needed, to actually get access to the PC for windows log on screen (if you use it). With these options selected, you can access the PC and control it with no input needed on the PC's side from someone else
I think I've covered most of what's needed. Only other thing you may have to do is to set rules/ports on your firewalls but that's out of the scope of this. I would suggest that if you have problems that may point to this area, disable your firewall for testing.
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