ASUS RT-N66U with media server and DLNA support

General Discussions
1

Hi,


New here and Plex is awesome :slight_smile:


Question: I have an ASUS wifi router at home that essentially allows me to plug in a USB harddrive and stream from it via a number of methods. They have an app AICloud, which isn’t great as a player, they also have media server service and a DLNA service. Obviously nothing can be installed on the router, but I would love to have the Plex client access the media on the attached USB. Anyway to do this? The benefit is that I don’t need to keep my PC running all the time to power the PMS and I don’t have to have all my media on it either.


Alternatively and as a halfway solution… Can I add a network drive to the media library of PMS running on my PC?


Thanks!

Matt

2

That isn't too hard.  Have the Asus router share the drive using SMB (Network Neighborhood/Windows sharing), then on your plex server, mount the samba share / CIFS drive (or if its Windows, just find it using \\<IP ADDRESS>) and then map it as a drive.  Plex can then create a library or add this location to a library.

But you cant access the AiCloud shares which use DLNA protocol using the plex client if the PMS isn't online as an intermediary.  Unless you CLoud sync everything, in which case the clients could easily see the cloud sync'ed verison.  Otherwise, use a DLNA client.

3

I did this (same as described by bdhipps) with my router (RT-N66R) and it worked, but I had the router lock up on me a couple of times so I ended up using an external drive connected to pc. The server does have to be running either way.

4

Thanks guys, I’ve given up on using the router for streaming as like you say I need to have the PMS running somewhere anyway. Thanks for the feedback though!

5

I know this is an old thread but I’m bringing it back! With the new cloud capabilities of Plex, it would be awesome to be able to use my router as a cloud provider and not have to keep my full server running 24x7.

6

@Wperry1 said:
I know this is an old thread but I’m bringing it back! With the new cloud capabilities of Plex, it would be awesome to be able to use my router as a cloud provider and not have to keep my full server running 24x7.

The majority of routers does not have the processing power to run a Plex server. There is only one that does and I believe it’s around $500.

7

@danjames92 said:
The majority of routers does not have the processing power to run a Plex server. There is only one that does and I believe it’s around $500.

I agree that running Plex on the router would be impractical. For $500 you could get a NUC or NAS to run the server.
I was thinking of something like Plex Cloud, where the compute is handled separately from the storage. The router would take the place of Dropbox, Google, or OneDrive. I can see though where adding support for a wide variety of routers would be a lot of work to perform and maintain for the Plex crew.