Steam/Valve is sending me Wake On Lan magic packets. Why?

[Kråketær]

I've had an issue for ages (years, IIRC) where my desktop wakes up from sleep on its own accord. I first thought it was due to some wierd bug with my ancient hardware, but it's persisted across a full platform upgrade (kept the GPU, new CPU, mobo, SSD and fresh Windows install). Thus I set out to investigate.

After eliminating USB devices from the list of suspects, looking at the Windows event log told me the vast majority of wake events come from the Ethernet controller. So I got a WoL packet sniffer app. I kept my PC awake for about two days - nothing. Then I give in and put the PC to sleep, and two hours later I come back to a switched-on PC, and a wall of entries in the packet sniffer. No less than four separate magic packets logged.

Looking up the IP addresses, there are two: one in the UK and one in Sweden. Both list Valve Corporation as the ISP. In other words: Steam/Valve is sending Wake On Lan magic packets to my PC whenever I put it to sleep.

Not only that, but given the absolute lack of packets received as long as I kept it awake, Steam is actively monitoring when I put my computer to sleep (my guess is the Steam app sends out some sort of signal, either a "I'm still here" continuously, or just a one-off "computer going to sleep").

This right here is some weird stuff, for sure. I have never, ever agreed to let Valve remotely wake my PC on their own accord, and I really can't understand why they would want to. Is this just an error from their side? Some sort of server bug?

Has anyone else experienced this?

[Wolfpig]

Never had that.....but on the other hand....i shut down my pc completely and not just into sleep mode, as later could cause issues with software in the worst case.

And if you do not need the wake on lan feature.....shut it off, should solve the problem.

[MancSoulja]

Originally posted by Kraaketaer:

Not only that, but given the absolute lack of packets received as long as I kept it awake, Steam is actively monitoring when I put my computer to sleep (my guess is the Steam app sends out some sort of signal, either a "I'm still here" continuously, or just a one-off "computer going to sleep").

Steam does this so it can set your status to away when your PC is idle.

[ReBoot]

The question is how those pakets can get into your LAN. WOL isnt specified for WANs.

[kate]

I have the same thing!

[Kråketær]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

The question is how those pakets can get into your LAN. WOL isnt specified for WANs.

That's an excellent question. The port used by the packets is not opened in my router (AFAIK - settings say no, but it's an ISP-supplied router, so it's rather garbage) but I suppose that's a minor obstacle.

Originally posted by melloh7:

I have the same thing!

If you want to confirm: the WoL packet sniffer can be downloaded here: https://www.apreltech.com/Free/Wake_on_lan_Packet_Sniffer
It's a tiny zipped app, needs no installation.
Run the app, put your computer to sleep, and check the readout once it wakes up. You can look up any IP addresses here: https://www.whatismyip.com/ip-address-lookup/

Originally posted by MancSoulja:

Originally posted by Kraaketaer:

Not only that, but given the absolute lack of packets received as long as I kept it awake, Steam is actively monitoring when I put my computer to sleep (my guess is the Steam app sends out some sort of signal, either a "I'm still here" continuously, or just a one-off "computer going to sleep").

Steam does this so it can set your status to away when your PC is idle.

Sleep is not the same as idle. Sleep is, for all Steam should know, powered down entirely. It has no reason to show me as anything else than "offline". Other than that, your reasoning doesn't make much sense. I get monitoring use/activity (screen off etc.), but sleep? No. And even if they did, why on earth send out WoL magic packets? That's like playing a tuba in someone's bedroom to check if they're asleep.

Originally posted by Wolfpig:

Never had that.....but on the other hand....i shut down my pc completely and not just into sleep mode, as later could cause issues with software in the worst case.

And if you do not need the wake on lan feature.....shut it off, should solve the problem.

I reboot regularly, but prefer to put my PC to sleep when not in use - why leave it on, using power and wearing out my water pump when I don't need it? Also, unfortunately, I can't find a "disable WoL" function in the BIOS for my motherboard. It's a Biostar board, so I guess it goes with the territory.

[ReBoot]

Ask your ISP why the hell is their router doing this.

[Kråketær]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Ask your ISP why the hell is their router doing this.

In time I will, but first off, I'm interested in hearing from Valve why they hell they are doing this. My ISP has ♥♥♥♥♥♥ routers, that's expected. Valve is actively interfering with my PC and my network. That's far more nefarious.

[somnolentsurfer]

I bought a new PC just before Christmas to use as a games machine hooked to my TV. I’ve set it up to also allow streaming to my iPad using Moonlight for Nvidia Gamestream. That means I want to be able to wake the machine from standby over the LAN, so I can connect to it. But I’ve also found it waking randomly all the time without me sending magic packets from Moonlight.

I used the packet sniffer mentioned in this thread and found the packets that are waking it seem to be coming from my MacBook, with the lid closed. I’m not seeing any external IP addresses like the OP here (though weirdly the MAC addresses the packet sniffer mentions don’t appear to be any that exist on my network), but when I googled the port the packets were arriving on it seems to be one used for Steam In Home Streaming.

Any idea why Steam is generating the magic packets, and how to stop it?

[Satoru]

Possible its doing it to 'ping' other devices on the network. Like the steam link or other broadcast devices

[somnolentsurfer]

Can I stop it doing that? I want to use Wake on LAN because I want to use in home streaming, but I don't want to leave all my machines on all the time. But I also don't want them all randomly woken every time Steam decides to wake the whole network for no good reason.

I've also just discovered from having the sniffer running as Steam starts up that on start up it seems to receive a magic packet from a Valve IP address (162.254.196.83), send one back, and then receive one more. Now, I don't know enough about magic packets to tell whether that's genuine, or whether the sniffer is just picking up something normal that Steam is doing. But when I've closed Steam on all my devices and left the machine today, it hasn't seemed to wake up.

[ReBoot]

Firewall them out on the router. Should be possible.

[somnolentsurfer]

I'll give that a try when I get a chance, but it sounds more like a workaround than a solution. Will it stop In Home Streaming working altogether? Is there a way to have streaming turned on, and only see the machines that are currently active, without Steam trying to wake everything on the network?

[ReBoot]

The solution would be to properly fix your router. Magic packets arent routable on the internet and if your router accepts them from the outside (or maybe generates them), its broken.

IHS has absolutely 0 to do with this. Or are you mixing things uo entirely and the packets orifinate from your LAN?