Have you ever needed to access your home computer while traveling or working remotely? If set up securely, remote access can make your life much easier, whether you’re retrieving a file, running a program, or managing your home network.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to safely and efficiently access your home PC from anywhere. We’ll tackle all the real-world problems that make remote access tricky:
🔹 Your dynamic public IP address keeps changing.
🔹 A PC that is sleeping or powered off when you need it most.
🔹 And how to do it without exposing your system to hackers scanning the internet 24/7.
I’ll walk you through practical setups, from remote desktop and VPN tunnels to Wake-on-LAN over the internet.
The challenges:
1/ The first challenge we must handle is the dynamic public IP address. Most home internet connections use what’s called a dynamic public IP address, which means your address on the internet changes regularly.
One day, your router’s IP might be 41.107.18.202, and a few days later… it might be completely different. So, if you try to access your home PC remotely, you’ll often find that the IP you saved no longer works.
Internet providers do this to manage their IP pool efficiently, but it’s a headache for us.
The solution? Dynamic DNS, or DDNS for short. DDNS services act as a “bridge” between a domain name and your ever-changing IP address. Instead of remembering your IP, you connect to an easy name like myhomepc.ddns.net, and the DDNS service automatically keeps it updated whenever your public IP changes.
Most modern routers support DDNS directly; you just sign up for a free service like No-IP, DuckDNS, or Dynu, enter your credentials in the router’s DDNS settings, and it keeps your domain synced in real time. Once it’s configured, you can reach your home computer anytime without worrying about your IP address.
2/ The second challenge we need to solve is how to power on a turned-off computer. If your PC isn’t online, you can’t connect to it; it’s as simple as that.
The solution is a feature called Wake-on-LAN.
Wake-on-LAN allows you to remotely power on a computer or wake it from a low-power state like sleep or hibernation. It works by sending a special Ethernet message, known as a magic packet, to your computer’s network card. Even when your system is off, the network adapter keeps listening for that packet and powers on the machine when it receives it.
The Wake-on-LAN feature is available on most modern computers. First, you’ll need to enable it in the BIOS. Then, you’ll need to enable it on Windows by setting up the network adapter’s power management features.
NB: Before we dive into the configuration details, there’s an important note about Wi-Fi adapters: not all support Wake-on-LAN. In that case, you’ll need to use your Ethernet port, which means connecting a network cable.
And I know what you’re thinking — “Do I really need to run a cable from the router in the hallway all the way to my bedroom?” Don’t worry, you don’t have to.
A simple solution is to use a small travel router configured as a Wi-Fi client. Connect it to your home Wi-Fi, then plug your PC into it with a short Ethernet cable. That’s exactly the setup I’ve used for this experiment.
Configuring DDNS:
The first step is to set up a DDNS service to handle changing public IP addresses. I will use the NO-IP service provider for that purpose, but feel free to select the DDNS service that best suits your preferences.
1/Go to https://www.noip.com/ and sign up for a free account. Next, open a session.
2/ Open the menu DDNS & Remote Access > DNS Records, then click on the “Create Hostname” button to create a new zone.
3/ Enter the hostname that identifies your home computer (e.g., myhome-pc) and choose the domain name you’ll use (e.g., ddns.net) from the list. No-IP will automatically detect your public IP address and link it to the hostname.
4/ Click on the DDNS Keys menu, then on the “Add Group” button
5/ Enter a description for your group (eg, mygroup), then select the hostname you created previously to link it to that group.
6/ Copy the username, password, and DDNS hostname key and paste them into Notepad. You will use these later when configuring the DDNS settings on your home router.
Configuring the DDNS service on The Router
Next, we must set up the DDNS service on your home router. Most routers support this feature; look for it in your router’s menu.
1/ Create a new instance.
2/ Select the service provider no-ip.com and enter the details we previously copied in the notepad (hostname, username, password, etc.).
Now, each time your router restarts and receives a new public IP address, it will automatically update the DDNS provider to ensure the hostname always points to the correct address.
Configuring the Wake-on-Lan Feature:
1/ On the Home Computer:
First, you must set up the home computer’s Wake-on-LAN (WoL) feature.
You must ensure that this feature is supported by your BIOS/UEFI by entering your BIOS, searching for that feature, and enabling it if it is not enabled.
The menu and feature names may vary depending on your computer’s brand.
The second step is to enable the WoL feature on Windows.
1/ Open the device manager, and display your network device properties;
2/ Click the “Power Management” tab and check the “Allow this device to wake the computer” box.
3/ On the same properties windows, click on the “Advanced” tab and ensure that the “Wake on Magic Packet” property is set to “Enabled“.
Your computer is now configured to wake from sleep or hibernation whenever the network card receives the magic packet.
2/ On the Home Router:
Now you need to configure the router to send the magic packets to your home computer to wake it up from a standby mode.
Some router models come equipped with built-in Wake-on-LAN functionality; sometimes, you must explicitly activate this feature by installing a package.
If your router doesn’t offer such a feature, I will show you a workaround in the upcoming section.
You are now ready for the next step: setting up a VPN tunnel between the remote device and your home router.
Setting Up the VPN Tunnel
A VPN tunnel is required to create a secure connection between your remote device and your home network over the Internet.
1/ Configuring the VPN on The Router
If your router supports VPN tunneling, use it to create a secure connection when accessing the Wake-on-LAN feature. Otherwise, you’d have to log in through the router’s public web interface (for example https://myhome-pc.ddns.net), which exposes the admin page to brute-force attacks on the Internet.
If you must use the public interface, set a robust admin password, keep your router firmware up to date, and if available, enable two-factor authentication and restrict remote management to specific IP addresses or ports to reduce exposure.
NB: If your router doesn’t support VPN tunneling, go to the next section
Select the PPTP VPN protocol on your home router and configure the router to operate as a VPN server.
Configure the following parameters:
- Local IP: Assign the VPN interface an IP address within the same subnet as your home network. For example, if your router’s IP address is 192.168.1.1, you can assign 192.168.1.2 as the VPN interface’s local IP address.
- Remote IP range: Enter an IP range to assign to clients to establish a VPN connection with the router. If you are the only person connecting to your home PC, you can assign a range of one IP address (192.168.1.10 – 192.168.1.11)
- Username and Password: Create a username and password that the VPN client will use to authenticate when connecting to your home network.
2/ Configuring the VPN on the Remote Computer
On the remote Windows computer, configure the PPTP VPN tunnel.
- Open Windows settings, navigate to Network & Internet > VPN, and click the “Add VPN” button.
- Enter the following settings, and save your configuration:
- To test your VPN connection, click on the “Connect” button.
Now you are all set to connect to your home computer remotely.
- Establish the VPN tunnel.
- Access the router’s admin interface: Log in to your home router’s management page.
- Wake your home computer: Use the Wake-on-LAN feature to power on your computer if it’s offline.
- Open a Remote Desktop (RDP) session: Once your computer is awake, start an RDP session to access it remotely.
In case Your Home Router does not support WoL and VPN:
Some home routers do not support the Wake-on-Lan feature and VPN. In this case, you can apply the following workarounds ;
1/ Solution For the WoL feature:
Unfortunately, the wake-on-LAN feature doesn’t work over the Internet. You can just install a Wake-on-Lan tool on the remote device, such as the Nirsoft WakeMeOnLan tool, to wake up your home computer. This limitation exists because Wake-on-LAN relies on the target computer’s MAC address to send the magic packet, and MAC addresses operate at Layer 2 of the OSI model, which cannot be routed across the Internet.
The workaround is to prevent your home computer from entering sleep or hibernation mode. However, this approach has several drawbacks; it increases power consumption, keeps hardware components running continuously, and may shorten the system’s lifespan over time.
To overcome these drawbacks, you can configure your computer to wake up and sleep on a schedule automatically. Set a daily wake-up time in your computer’s BIOS, and in Windows Task Scheduler, create a task to put the computer into sleep or hibernation at a specific time.
For example, if you typically need remote access between 9 AM and 5 PM, schedule your system to wake up just before 9 AM and sleep shortly after 5 PM.
2/ Solution for the VPN
Now that your home computer’s availability issue is resolved, you can establish a direct VPN connection between your home computer and the remote device by following these steps:
On the Home computer:
- Open the control panel and navigate to Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center. Click “Change adapter settings,” then press the left ALT on your keyboard to reveal the menu bar.
- On the first page, select the authorized user allowed to connect to the home computer. The wizard displays a list of the local user accounts.
- On the next page, check the “Through the internet” checkbox to specify how people will connect to the computer.
- On the last page, keep the default selection and click on the “Allow access” button.
The home computer will act as a VPN server waiting for incoming connection requests.
On the Remote computer
Now, you need to set up the other side of the VPN tunnel on the remote computer. For that, follow the steps in the Configuring the VPN on the Remote Computer section.
That’s it, your home computer is now fully configured and ready to accept incoming remote connections.
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