So I want to setup a remote backup location at my parents house although they are very mindful about there electricity usage and environmental impact (and so am I) so I don’t want to have to have a pc always on when it doesn’t need to be.

Is it possible to setup remote Wake-on-lan so I can schedule my homelab at my place to wake up the server at my parents house and start a backup like once a week, I want to do this in a secure fashion as well so ideally no port forwarding, I currently use cloudflare tunnels for my home network.

Are there any other options or do you have a similar setup at your place?

  • SteveTech@aussie.zoneEnglish
    2·
    3 hours ago

    You’re going to have a hard time trying to get that working over the WAN (if that’s even possible).

    Wake on LAN is still encapsulated in an IP packet, so you can send it over the internet, and most WOL clients let you specify an IP. However your router will need to DNAT it to a broadcast address. Some routers have a check box for this (e.g. An ISP provided Technicolor router I have), some let you port forward to broadcast (e.g. Many routers, sometimes with workarounds), and some let you manually configure NAT (e.g. MikroTik routers).

    So it is possible, but forwarding public internet traffic to a broadcast address seems like a bad idea, and I wouldn’t recommend it. Why I know this: I used to do this in middle school, and it does work quite well.