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I have this first world problem - a video game is released when I'm at work, it's a massive download and I want it to be ready when I come home from work.

My idea would be to SSH into it from where I'd manage to do whatever is needed.

The problem is - how do I turn it on remotely? Normally I keep it off (not sleeping). I think it's called hibernate, since as much as I remember normally windows 10 doesn't completely turn off? Anyways I press Shut down button.

Most janky setup for that would be a raspberry with a servo, probably can be done with relay, but honestly I don't want and am afraid of doing that.

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    You want something called Wake-on-Lan - You send a "magic packet" through your Ethernet connection to the computer, and that turns it on. You can send this in your local network, and you need to configure your BIOS for it too. However, I'm not sure if you can do so over WAN - thats something you need to figure out using port forwarding or a VPN
    – QuickishFM
    Mar 22, 2019 at 12:48
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    Some suggestions here on waking a PC over the internet.....superuser.com/questions/1342554/…
    – Moab
    Mar 22, 2019 at 13:04

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You can not send Wake-On-Lan over WAN. With a more sophisticated home router you can setup secure remote access to the router and send WOL from it. For example routers that run dd-wrt/tomato.

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WOL OVER IPv4:

You can send WOL magic packet through WAN in IPv4, with a simple port forwarding from your router to your computer´s IP. You just pick a port, forward this port to your computer, then send magic packet to your public IP.

PS: This only works if your ISP is not using CGNAT. You know that you are in CGNAT if your public IP is different than the WAN IP shown in your router setup page. Usually your WAN IP over CGNAT will be 100.xxx.xxx.xxx or 10.xxx.xxx.xxx or 192.xxx.xxx.xxx or 172.xxx.xxx.xxx.

Requirements:

  • Your computer OS has to have this functionality, and it has to be enabled (I know Windows 7 and newer do).
  • Your Motherboard and BIOS must have this functionality (almost any MB has it)
  • Your computer has to be Hybernated or sleeping. If you turn it off, the network card has no power so it is impossible to receive data.
  • You need to forward the desired port (usually UDP 7 or 9) from your internet router to your computer. This is done by entering it´s configuration page (usually you just enter your gateway IP in your browser address field)
  • Better to give your computer a static IP inside your LAN, so that the packet is forwarded to the right IP.
  • You need way to send the UDP packet to your PC. There are many many android apps, some PC freeware and even some websites that do this (example: Depicus Wake On Lan)

ADVANCED: You can define the network mask in almost all WOL software/app. If you need to wake up many computers in your LAN, you don´t have to forward ports to every PC. You just set the broadcast address to 0.0.0.0, then the packet will be sent to your entire LAN and every PC will listen. Don´t worry, you will only wake up the PC that matches the MAC address you sent.

WOL OVER IPv6:

Until now I haven´t found any software or app that is able to send an IPv6 packet through WAN sucessfully, so up to now, my guess is that WOL over IPv6 is not possible from WAN, although it works fine from LAN with many apps that support IPv6.

PS: I have been using WOL through IPv4 this to turn on my home computer from anywhere for years.

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