wtfacoconut Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 This is just a possible idea and I'm not sure if this has been done yet but here it goes. Basically my home has a combination of wired and wireless networking. From time to time I'd need to get something from my computer from either skool or work and I'd use WOL to wake the computers that are wired to my router, using a combination of DDNS and the DDNS features in my router because I have cable and a DHCP address. Unfortunately as we all know this doesn't apply to wifi which is a pain in the ass for me ( and other people I'm sure) because half the machines in my network are wireless. Well enough of that, and here's the basic idea/concept: Some how to configure the jasager/fon router to connect to your wireless network while connected to your computer (via ethernet) and have it set up so that it will pick-up either magic packets/wake-up-frames and then pump that into your ethernet nic and wake up your comp. One thing I think might be a problem might be that when your main router recieves the magical packet, your router will only rout that signal over the wired part of your network and completely dismiss even broadcasting the magic packet wirelessly. To that I thought (in the extreme case) you may need two jasager/fon routers, one on your computer and the other wired to your main router, (having your jasager/fon routers acting like a bridge/switch) so that it will foward the incomming magical packet, Another issue that I thought might come from all of that is MAC conflicts/routing issues due to how the magic packet might get passed around. To that I don't really have to much of an idea on how to solve that. So! anyone think this is to dumb of an idea or even possible? (FYI: I'm aware that people have been able to wirelessly wake their computers while they're hibernating or sleeping. I'm talking about going one step further.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 Wireless is entirely broadcast based. Any thing in the air will be herd by every thing in receiving range. It is entirely possible for a wireless network adapter to wake a computer up based on the reception of a particular packet, but that would be a feature of the network adapter (and in the firmware). On top of this your motherboard would have to allow your wireless adapter to stay on while the rest of the computer is off (though I'm sure most do). As there is no current standard (as far as I am aware for) for wireless WOL the manufacturer of a card that support this feature would have to come up with a method for the card to be told that the computer needs to be turned on. I would recommend a single UDP packet received on any port that contains a number that the network adapters firmware would look for. This would allow for backwards compatibility and would be able to bridge the gap between computer at work > corporate firewall > internet > home nat router > access point > computer. You could even disguise this packet as a DNS request, though if a company is blocking outbound UDP (for what ever reason) they are probably blocking out bound DNS as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtfacoconut Posted February 3, 2009 Author Share Posted February 3, 2009 Wireless is entirely broadcast based. Any thing in the air will be herd by every thing in receiving range. It is entirely possible for a wireless network adapter to wake a computer up based on the reception of a particular packet, but that would be a feature of the network adapter (and in the firmware). On top of this your motherboard would have to allow your wireless adapter to stay on while the rest of the computer is off (though I'm sure most do). As there is no current standard (as far as I am aware for) for wireless WOL the manufacturer of a card that support this feature would have to come up with a method for the card to be told that the computer needs to be turned on. I would recommend a single UDP packet received on any port that contains a number that the network adapters firmware would look for. This would allow for backwards compatibility and would be able to bridge the gap between computer at work > corporate firewall > internet > home nat router > access point > computer. Ya that was my general train of thought from the beginning. Obviously wireless PCI cards are not receiving any power when the machine is off, which is part of the problem. The main reason why I was thinking and suggesting using something similar to the Jasager/fon routers is because: 1. those units have their own independent power supplies, so it doesn't matter weather or not the the computer is powered off, and 2. the Jasager/fon routers have programmable firmware, so you can tell it to listen in for a specific packet or just tell it to zone in on a particular port (for WOL I think it was either port 9 or 7). 3. lastly and obviously, it has an ethernet jack to plug in to your computers nic (which has a bios that supports WOL) so you can hit it with a magic packet. I'm assuming that Open WRT would be able to support that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 If you are going to use an external independent device to connect your computer to the wireless network all the work is done by simply connecting it to the network. As far as the computer is concerned there is no wireless involved. Not wireless WOL by any stretch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vector Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 yeah WOL for wireless adapters has been around for quite some time. im pretty sure any semi recent laptop will have a card that supports this feature. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtfacoconut Posted February 3, 2009 Author Share Posted February 3, 2009 yeah WOL for wireless adapters has been around for quite some time. im pretty sure any semi recent laptop will have a card that supports this feature. Well what you just showed isn't exactly what I was talking about. What I'm assuming that your talking about (judging based apon your pic) is waking a computer up when it's in stand-by/sleep/hibernation. What i was talking about is waking a computer that's completely shutdown/powered off. The way I was talking about pretty much is OS independent. Some people have been able to get their wireless cards to do WOL from Linux/BSD/Solaris while the system is either sleeping, hibernating, or what ever, but alot of the drivers out there for other OSs either don't support WOL in the manner you were just describing or have had a hard time trying to get it to work. and sparda, ya your probably right for the most part if not completely right about that last part. So far I've seen nothing on the market (except for expensive enterprise equipment.) that can do exactly what I was talking about. Ya'll happen know of anything that does this or similar? Who knows, this might be an interesting way to to a man-in-the-middle attack. (Or hijack) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vector Posted February 4, 2009 Share Posted February 4, 2009 maybe some of these apps could help. http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2007/1...om-lan-and-wan/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtfacoconut Posted February 4, 2009 Author Share Posted February 4, 2009 maybe some of these apps could help. http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2007/1...om-lan-and-wan/ Won't work. For those that use pci or usb wireless cards, they will never recieve the signal because the machines are powered off and neither the PCI or USB cards are recieving any power. That ( as of now) will only work on computers that are physically wired to the switch/router or are in stand-by/hibernation where some devices (depending on settings) are receiving power and etc... And once again, I already have DDNS setup and I can already do WOL on my computers that I have physically wired to my router. Me personally I use this app for all my WOL needs. http://users.telenet.be/jbosman/poweroff/poweroff.htm It can also turn off comps remotly and do a couple other things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vector Posted February 4, 2009 Share Posted February 4, 2009 your computer can still be shut down but still supply power to the ethernet controller and wireless card wireless card. either way there is still power being supplied to the network card if its a wireless adapter or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtfacoconut Posted February 4, 2009 Author Share Posted February 4, 2009 your computer can still be shut down but still supply power to the ethernet controller and wireless card wireless card. either way there is still power being supplied to the network card if its a wireless adapter or not. What bios and wireless card are you using? toss me a link plz. I already know that PCI and internal ethernet nic's can still get power when properly shutdown if setup in the bios, but every motherboard, bios, and wifi card I've used doesn't support WOL when the computers shutdown for wifi cards (neither PCI nor USB). thanks in advance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtfacoconut Posted February 4, 2009 Author Share Posted February 4, 2009 hmm.. It just occurred to me that I think I might have worded the title of this threat kinda backwards. Should be more aling the lines of "Ethernet over wifi". (>.<) my bad. just last night I put in an order for a Fon router and will give a whirl at trying to set this up. Any thoughts? Hints? Things that I'm just totally oblivious about? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted February 5, 2009 Share Posted February 5, 2009 Should be more aling the lines of "Ethernet over wifi". Wireless uses Ethernet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtfacoconut Posted February 5, 2009 Author Share Posted February 5, 2009 ok. poped open a can of JOLT and actually started reading and thinking at the same time. Something I sure that's already knows is, is that both open-wrt and dd-wrt have built in features that can be setup to handle the magic packets. The other thing is (don't know why it didn't hit me before and thanks Sparda for making my brain think the right direction) that this can be done with a wireless ethernet bridge (duh). Still though, from what I've read and gathered, some of those devices are not able to handle revieving and utilize the magic packets, so some custom firmware still may be required on both the bridge and the router (because aparently i've also found out and been explained to that most wireless routers don't support WOL on wireless) . I've decided to go ahead and try this out on 2 WRT54GL routers and if possible also on (a much smaller) one WET11 and one WRT54GL router. (Good thing my boss loves Jack Daniels) Wireless uses Ethernet. wow...to much thinking and to much caffine...and now I'm just confusing my self, just like when I used to ask my self 'which came first, the chicken or the egg.' (@_@) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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