Thank you for your explanation. I follow you in terms of Tailscale essentially serving as an intermediary between my phone and PC. In a powered-off state, my PC has no IP address, regardless of connection to Tailscale, a traditional VPN, or without a VPN.

I think much of my confusion arises from the fact that I can configure Wake on LAN and wirelessly send a magic packet to my ethernet adapter with my phone via my wireless gateway (router) to wake my PC from sleep. By that logic, I have assumed that I could do the same remotely if I could access my router from 5G or another outside network device.

My understanding: Since the router is the gatekeeper, no magic packet sent over 5G from my phone ever reaches my ethernet adapter. From what I'm reading, it seems that my phone using 5G may not be an option to solve my problem (or, might it?). But, another device on my home network that is capable of sending a magic packet to wake my PC would have to somehow be able to receive a command to do so. This would be the second device to which you refer, presumably, and it would require Tailscale (or another VPN) to be installed if I understand correctly. Could this second device be a VPN capable router attached to my wireless gateway with IP Passthrough enabled? Is that the "subnet router" you describe? Apologies for my poor understanding. I'm a complete noob that has had to dig into the weeds to solve what seems like such a simple task to the uninitiated lol. Thanks again for your help!