Wake-On LAN - Any Ideas?

[M17TT C]

I know there are a few techie people on here and this is beyond my very limited knowledge. I've got a NAS drive (Zyxel NSA310) which I've recently set to power down over night and whilst I'm at work to save a few trees a save a few pennies but there is no power on setting to schedule but it can be powered on by sending a WOL packet to it.

I've had a quick Google and not found anything relevant as yet and the 2 times I have had to physically turn it on has caused me great stress and wasted a lot of energy. Anyone know how to use this Wake On LAN feature to save me having to walk all the way to the NAS everytime I want to use it now? Is it possible to use this from multiple devices, ie wake from TV/PVR/BD Player/Console/Smartfone etc or does it have to be done through a computer?

Ta Muchly
Matt

 

[Macky]

You need to use a PC hardwired to your router over ethernet, the NAS device needs to be wired as well. Your OS and network card also need to support WOL.

It isn't exactly straight forward to set up, I'll have a bit of Gooogle for you, after the match, to see if I can find something relevant for you to follow.

 

[M17TT C]

Ta Macky, it did all seem to go a bit over my head what I read, nothing too simplistic so may just give it a miss as not the biggest deal having to turn it on when I want it as it will save a bit more leccy just I am a right lazy b*stard!!

Don't understand why it can't just have a bloody power on feature as well though.

EDIT - Hardware should all meet standard as all wired in, some through homplugs, and laptop is only 6 month old XPS 15 running Windows 7 so presume that would have the necessary features.

 

[SJN-Fox]

Have you enabled the WOL feature in your NAS configuration software ... See P22 here ...

ftp://ftp.zyxel.com/NSA310/support_note/NSA310_1.0.pdf

 

[M17TT C]

Yeah I had done that, just didn't have a clue about how to send a packet. Didn't realise I need to program to do that for me though so nice one for the line SJN - I'll give one of them programs a try now as I've not turned it on yet and can't be arsed to go all the way downstairs to do so!!

 

[Macky]

I've not been able to find anything particularly 'straightforward' as far as instructions go matey.
Do you really need to use WoL? It's probably a lot more hassle than it's worth, to be honest. It'll cost pennies a year to just leave the damn thing running and it'll be handier to access, as opposed to pinging it with a separate app to wake it up every time you need it.

 

[M17TT C]

Nice one for looking Macky - SJN's linked seemed pretty straight forward but just tried that and I've not got it to work as yet. I'll have another look over the weekend and hopefully get it to work as it should be easy enough as just needs IP & MAC address and a little program to send the magic packet thingy.

It would be quite handy to use though as if it worked it would be off for at least half the time - ie at least 6 months a year. They cost about £20 per year to run if on constant so I know it's not the greatest saving but I always try and do a bit to help when it's easy to do so but not going to be losing much sleep about it if I can't get it working without wasting too much time!!

Thanks again though.

EDIT - Re-reading things it may be the router being the problem as I'm not sure if that supports all this magic packet stuff or not, tis a quite old one so maybe not if WoL is a fairly new thing.

 

[Macky]

Re-reading things it may be the router being the problem as I'm not sure if that supports all this magic packet stuff or not, tis a quite old one so maybe not if WoL is a fairly new thing.

Your router doesn't need to support WoL as such, but you will need to open the ports being used by whichever app you are using to ping the drive to wake it up. On your router config page it'll be labelled as 'Port Forwarding' or similar.

 

[M17TT C]

Ah right, that kind of ties in with one of the programs I tried if ports 0,7 or 9 are likey to be ports that need opening in the router? There was an option to set a port when configuring the magic packet but I just left it as default as I wasn't sure on that one!

Cheers though both, hopefully you should have armed me with enough to work on now but will look into it again tomorrow as it's running a back-up currently.