Wake-on-LAN allows you to turn on a sleeping or powered-off computer. This means you can remotely control an offline computer by waking it up first before establishing a connection to it.
You can initiate the wake-up request from another Windows or Mac computer or even an Android or iOS device running the TeamViewer Remote Control app.
Note: It’s not possible to wake up a Mac computer that is fully powered down, as Apple doesn’t allow this. Macs can only be woken up from sleep mode. However, Windows and Linux PCs can be woken up from sleep and hibernation mode, as well as fully powered down, so long as the hardware supports this.
This article applies to Remote Access, Business, Premium, Corporate and Tensor customers.
Wake-on-LAN can be used through two different methods:
Choose one of the methods depending on the circumstances.
Choose this method if there is a second computer (e.g. a server) within the remote computer's network that is turned on permanently.
In this case, you can use the second computer to wake up the remote computer. The second computer acts as a “middleman” to forward the wake-up request to the remote computer. This method requires considerably less configuration effort than the second method.
If you can match all the above, you can wake up the remote computer in three easy steps:
Choose this method if the remote computer can be reached via a public address. This is the case if you have either a fixed, static IP through your Internet provider or if your router has a public domain address with the help of a dynamic DNS provider.
In these cases, you can configure TeamViewer so that the remote computer is woken through this address. The configuration effort of this method is higher and more complex than in method 1 because you have to set up your router accordingly.
If yes to all of the above, the following steps are necessary to use Wake-on-LAN via a public address:
Configure the BIOS:
Configure the network card:
Deactivate fast startup:
To install TeamViewer Host on your device and assign the device to your account, please follow the instructions of this article: Provide unattended remote support
If you want to wake up the remote computer via another computer within the same network, you need to indicate which TeamViewer ID should wake up the remote computer.
If you want to wake up the remote computer via its public address, you need to configure Wake-on-LAN accordingly.
The router only needs to be configured if you have chosen the Public address option. If you have chosen the option TeamViewer IDs within your network, you can skip this section.
Configuring the router depends on the device used and the firmware installed on it. Not all types of devices support the necessary configuration.
Support of Wake-on-LAN via a router's public address requires port forwarding to be set up. Depending on the router used, only some of the following alternative configuration possibilities may be supported.
Note: In order to configure the router, please refer to the manufacturer's manual if necessary.
In order to be able to wake up all computers in the local network, set up port forwarding as described in the router manual from an incoming UDP port (e.g. 9) to the broadcast address of the local network (this often ends in ".255"). This configuration makes it possible to wake up all computers in the router's local network that have been configured according to the directions mentioned above.
Example:
If the local network is configured with 192.168.1.0 and the subnet mask 255.255.255.0, then port forwarding must be configured from UDP port 9 to 192.168.1.255:9. Sometimes routers do not allow a broadcast address ending in ".255" as the port forwarding destination. This problem can sometimes be avoided by selecting a smaller subnet mask for the local network (e.g. 255.255.255.128), thus, the broadcast address ends with “.127”.
In order to wake up a certain computer in the local network, set up port forwarding as described in the router manual from an incoming UDP port (e.g. 9) to the local IP address of the computer to be wakened.
It must also be ensured that your router can address the appropriate computer, even when this computer is turned off. In order to do so, a static ARP entry must be saved on the router (see instructions for the router), showing the IP address of the computer to be wakened on the MAC address of this computer.
Some routers generate appropriate static ARP entries if a fixed IP address is reserved for this computer (no DHCP). In some cases, an appropriate configuration of the static ARP entries cannot be achieved via the router's configuration menu.
The ARP entries can then be configured via Telnet or SSH. This is the case for example, with the Fritzbox.