Airport Extreme, Various Macs, and Wireless Wake on Lan

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Level 1

4 points

Airport Extreme, Various Macs, and Wireless Wake on Lan

Hello everyone, I've spent the last several hours researching a couple of issues, and can't seem to get things working. Hopefully someone can give some good advice.

Two issues:

1) I have DSL with a Zyxel Modem/Router (model 660). I had hoped to use the Zyxel as only a modem, and use my new Airport Extreme as the router. But I can't seem to get the Zyxel to work as a bridge. Instead, I'm forced to use the Zyxel for DHCP and NAT, and use the Airport as a bridge. Is it better to keep trying to get it to work the other way and have the Apple device handle the DHCP and NAT? Or does it not matter. I've tried many different configurations to get the Zyxel to be a bridge, but I end up with no Internet. I'm able to set the PPPoE account/password on the Airport, but it's not generating an Internet connection.

2) I want to be able to wake my wirelessly-connected iMac remotely (from outside my LAN). I have all the pieces and settings in place. The iMac is capable of WoWLAN, it's turned on in Energy settings, etc. The Airport Extreme is updated to firmware 4.7.2. I am able to send a wakeup signal to the machine from my iPad when on my LAN, and it works. However when I connect that iPad outside my LAN and send the signal, nothing happens. I'm using the IP address of the Airport and the MAC address of the iMac. As I said, these settings work within my network. So I'm missing something crucial in the setup for getting that signal to the iMac from outside the LAN. Any ideas? Does it have to do with port forwarding? Does this problem have anything to do with using the Airport as a bridge??

Thanks a lot. Andy

Airport Extreme-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Jun 17, 2011 9:19 AM

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Answer 1

macnmotion Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 18, 2011 9:56 AM in response to macnmotion

I figured out the second half of my question:

I had to set up Port Forwarding on the Zyxel Router so that the magic packet was sent to the right machine. Because I'm using an Airport Extreme, the forwarding can be sent wirelessly to my iMac. I am now able to wake up the iMac from outside my network using Mocha WOL App (free) on my iPad. I can then use TeamViewer (free) to connect to my iMac and control it from the iPad.

I am still uncertain about whether I'm suffering by using the Airport Extreme only as a bridge.

Andy

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Answer 2

macnmotion Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 19, 2011 8:49 PM in response to macnmotion

Well it turns out that what worked once doesn't work now, I'm at a remote location and I can no longer wake my desktop computer. Very disappointing. I wish that somewhere there were concise instructions on how to make this work rather than all the little pieces here and there.

And the lack of any answers on this thread either tells me that nobody cares to wake their computers remotely, or nobody has a good idea on how to do it. 🙂

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Answer 3

macnmotion Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 20, 2011 6:06 AM in response to macnmotion

Solved again. My router's IP changed on me. I guess I knew that would eventually happen, just not so soon. Anyway I got a free subdomain at dyndns.com and pointed it to my router's public IP. In order to keep dyndns.com up to date if my router's IP changes, I turned on nyndns notification directly on the router (it's built in to my router) but also as a backup I am using the dyndns updater app on my mac to do the same thing. So one way or another, the proper IP should be updated and I should be able to reach my computer with a magic packet.

So in a nutshell:

Zyxel router providing DHCP and NAT services. Apple Airport Extreme connected as a bridge, creating wireless LAN. Apple desktop connected to wireless LAN, Apple laptop connected via ethernet to Airport Extreme.

1) Free dyndns subdomain constantly updated with router's IP

2) mWOL app on my iPad sends magic packet to the dyndns subdomain along with my mac's MAC ADDRESS

3) port forwarding on router points incoming magic packet to my mac desktop

Once I've woken up the mac desktop, I can log in with free Teamviewer app (iPad), and from there activate the Wakeonlan widget in my Dashboard, and using that I can wake up my laptop which is on the same LAN (the reason I have to do this is because the router can only forward the magic packet port to one of the two computers, so I chose the desktop). If my laptop is with me, I can use Teamviewer on the laptop to connect directly to my iMac without using the iPad.

So using Wireless Wake on LAN I now have access to both computers and an Airport-attached USB drive from anywhere. Cool.

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Answer 4

Aug 1, 2011 3:24 AM in response to macnmotion

Hi, I was very intrested in your post since I to want to wake my mac (macbook pro latest) over WLAN. I musy say your solution is to complicated for me, I'm not that savy with network config. I should give it a try though and see how it goes...

Cool stuff, keep on writing! 😎

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