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sinjiku
New Member
April 10, 2026
Question

Wake On Lan broadcast across VLAN

  • April 10, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 162 views

Hi

 

I have a Fortigat 200 (v7.6.6)

I have a server WAPT on vlan 10 and I want use it to wake on lan my PC in vlan 20.

Unicast WOL is working 

wakeonlan -i <ip> <mac>

But not with broadcast WOL. And WAPT use only broadcast mode for doing that.
When I try to wol aPC (10.20.20.1) from wapt server (10.10.10.1) on vlan 10 :

# diagnose sniffer packet v10 'dst 10.20.20.255' interfaces=[v10] filters=[dst 10.20.20.255] 3.495703 10.10.10.1.41831 -> 10.20.20.255.7: udp 102 3.495938 10.10.10.1.48121 -> 10.20.20.255.9: udp 102 # diagnose sniffer packet v20 'udp' interfaces=[v20] filters=[udp]

 

I have taken a look here

https://community.fortinet.com/t5/FortiGate/Technical-Tip-How-to-route-Wake-On-Lan-WOL-magic-packet-through/ta-p/198103

 

but I don't understand if I need to add an entry in arp table for each PC I want to wake up (I have 2000 PC).

Or if i need to enable this command 

config system interface   edit <external_interface_name>   set broadcast-forward enable end

But what is "external_interface_name" ?

 

Thanks for your help

2 replies

sinjiku
sinjikuAuthor
New Member
April 10, 2026

Okay.

I have enabled broadcast-forward on interface v10.

And it's working

 

For information I have already add a firewall policy 

config firewall policy     edit 1529         set name "wol"         set srcintf "v10"         set dstintf "v20"         set action accept         set srcaddr "10.10.10.1"         set dstaddr "10.20.20.255"         set schedule "always"         set service "wol"         set logtraffic all         set comments "Wake on LAN"     next

 

Can you tell me if there is a risk to enable broadcast-forward on the interface ?

Thanks

AEK
SuperUser
SuperUser
April 16, 2026

Hi

I think there is no risk since you used a strict firewall policy.

AEK
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