WOL stops working after 15 min. ARP entries cleared randomly.

[d5aqoep]

I am facing this long standing problem (Almost since 10 years) for which Asus does not seem to give a F.

WOL stops working after 15 minutes because Asus Router has forgotten the ARP Static IP binding for LAN.

I have to pass the below arp commands in ssh for the ARP to stick but it resets after router reboot. On Merlin firmware, one can have various tricks and scripts to write ARP table again after boot but no such thing exists for official Asus firmware.
arp -s 192.168.50.xxx xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

I have made several requests to Asus over the years to fix this issue or at least give users an option in the GUI for those who don't want ARP entries to be scrambled every 15 minutes... but all efforts have gone in vain.

WOL is integral part of my life as I have to remote into some of my PCs while I am on travel and it hardly makes sense to keep those office PCs working 24x7.

I got TP-Link BE900 for one office and it frikking works flawlessly to WOL my PCs in that one office. But for the other offices, I am unable to use GT-AX6000 and GT-AX11000 PRO to work on official firmware. I also don't want to keep some random Raspberry Pi just for WOL. I tried Asus App but it's so unreliable and 50% of the time it just fails to connect so I can't wake from it's GUI too.

Anyone has figured a way around this?

 

[drabisan]

WOL is a UDP broadcast packet. No router and no switch should know where that mac address is. It should be seen by all network adapters in the network but only the one with MAC address in the payload will actually bother to come online. Actually is normal for a network to forget a mac address fairly soon after the host goes offline. Most if not all enterprise routers and switches have a default timeout of 240 minutes. Yet WOL works.
I'm using it for 10 years (this week is 10 years since I bought my first Asus) and it never failed me. I had 4 different models and who knows how many firmwares.
I'm VPN'ing to the router and use WOL from Network Tools menu.

How do you send magic packet?

 

[bbunge]

WOL is a UDP broadcast packet. No router and no switch should know where that mac address is. It should be seen by all network adapters in the network but only the one with MAC address in the payload will actually bother to come online. Actually is normal for a network to forget a mac address fairly soon after the host goes offline. Most if not all enterprise routers and switches have a default timeout of 240 minutes. Yet WOL works.
I'm using it for 10 years (this week is 10 years since I bought my first Asus) and it never failed me. I had 4 different models and who knows how many firmwares.
I'm VPN'ing to the router and use WOL from Network Tools menu.

How do you send magic packet?

Same here. WOL has worked fine since my N66U. OP mentioned something about Static IP binding that puzzles me with regard to WOL.

 

[d5aqoep]

WOL is a UDP broadcast packet. No router and no switch should know where that mac address is. It should be seen by all network adapters in the network but only the one with MAC address in the payload will actually bother to come online. Actually is normal for a network to forget a mac address fairly soon after the host goes offline. Most if not all enterprise routers and switches have a default timeout of 240 minutes. Yet WOL works.
I'm using it for 10 years (this week is 10 years since I bought my first Asus) and it never failed me. I had 4 different models and who knows how many firmwares.
I'm VPN'ing to the router and use WOL from Network Tools menu.

How do you send magic packet?

I use a basic WOL app on my iPhone because Asus app has 50-50% chance of working. Maybe my ISP has bad routing to asus servers or something else, I have a static IPv4 and port forward a port to port 9 of my PCs and I am able to wake them up very fast.

 

[ColinTaylor]

WOL stops working after 15 minutes because Asus Router has forgotten the ARP Static IP binding for LAN.

What firmware version are you using. There was an Asus fix for this that Merlin picked up recently IIRC.

 

[bbunge]

I use a basic WOL app on my iPhone because Asus app has 50-50% chance of working. Maybe my ISP has bad routing to asus servers or something else, I have a static IPv4 and port forward a port to port 9 of my PCs and I am able to wake them up very fast.

Maybe you should use a VPN to access your LAN. Much safer than port forwarding. Does your router have a static WAN or do your clients have static addresses?

 

[rung]

Maybe you should use a VPN to access your LAN. Much safer than port forwarding. Does your router have a static WAN or do your clients have static addresses?

This is the way to go. One button on my phone connects the vpn and I'm inside my lan. Other button on my phone executes a bash script that sends a ssh command to the router to wake up my pc.

 

[drabisan]

I use a basic WOL app on my iPhone because Asus app has 50-50% chance of working. Maybe my ISP has bad routing to asus servers or something else, I have a static IPv4 and port forward a port to port 9 of my PCs and I am able to wake them up very fast.

Now I understand what you are using. It's too much of carrier's mood for my taste.
I have never tried Asus' app. VPN back "home" is my choice. I have control to the level I'm looking for.

 

[d5aqoep]

What firmware version are you using. There was an Asus fix for this that Merlin picked up recently IIRC.

ASUS GT-AX6000 Firmware version 3.0.0.6.102_2151 Released on 2023/06/20

and

ASUS GT-AX11000 Pro Firmware version 3.0.0.4.388_24198 Released on 2023/11/07

Both are latest firmwares as if this comment.

 

[RMerlin]

There used to be an issue in networkmap causing static ARP entries to be flushed. I doubt that the June build has the fixed networkmap, but the November build should have the fix.

 

[d5aqoep]

There used to be an issue in networkmap causing static ARP entries to be flushed. I doubt that the June build has the fixed networkmap, but the November build should have the fix.

I updated my GT-AX11000 Pro just yesterday. I will check and report here.

Edit:
@RMerlin still same issue on November build on my GT-AX11000 Pro. Reset and setting up as new also didn't help.