So for someone like me that has uverse internet and has no idea what this stuff means. How can I try to get something out of att if this isn’t att’s problem? Which makes no sense cuz I’m with att and it’s a problem for me. Lol I just don’t even know what to say to them other then I’m blocked out of plex and I know it’s not really your fault. Lmao
You don’t have to understand more than what you just said. All that matters is that the service you pay for isn’t working as advertised. Ultimately they’re job is to provide you with access to the internet and even though this problem may not be directly on AT&T’s network, it’s still in the way they deliver you internet.
And so you tell them exactly that, your internet connection isn’t working. You can’t get to the site you want (doesn’t matter what site) but that you can on your phone (hell, for me it even works on my damn AT&T phone but not fiber, how fucked is that?) and on your friends internet. It works fine everywhere else. And you ask the retention department what they can do to make you not want to switch after this multi-day outage. Get some free months or maybe free static IPs, or something. And hey, worst case you can actually fire them and go elsewhere if it’s not that big a deal for you.
I have kind of a dumb question. If they blocked the 172.x IPs… why can I get to all my other programs fine? 172.x.x.x:32400 is blocked but 172.x.x.x:xxxx works fine?
Unless I have something set incorrectly, it seems nVidia Shield you need to have internet for Plex to work even if streaming locally? I’m going to try logging in over a VPN tonight to see if that fixes my issues but that’s a pretty bad weakness of the Shield. Does AppleTV require internet also?
I contacted AT&T but I got a tech that was not helpful and eventually I had to hang up to get back to work. I feel like contacting them over a complete outage is worthwhile, but this nuanced stuff is just impossible because their technical support agents don’t seem to have enough training to understand what I am asking.
Still not working… At this this point, the trace seems to end somewhere between L3 and AWS in Europe. Has PLEX contacted AWS to verify that their peering with L3 is correct? As this is affecting paying PLEX customers, PLEX staff are perhaps in the best position to get this corrected instead of relying on a few PLEX users flailing with consumer based provider support.
I think we’re fairly certain at this point that the issue is just isolated to AT&T users, not Plex as a whole, who have IP addresses starting with 172.xx
It is isolated to ATT users in the netblock 172.0.0.0/12, but the issue is not apparently an issue with ATT peering with L3. The issue is closer to the PLEX servers in AWS and the peering with L3 than ATT route peers.
Is there something Plex can do to re-route traffic until this is fixed?
Got my access restored! Let me tell you how…
I noticed that I could access plex.tv from an incognito Chrome tab, but not from my regular browser. So I went into my Chrome settings and cleared all browsing data from all time. After doing this, I was able to access plex.tv from my normal Chrome tab. I fired up the media server and presto, instant connection. A quick test on my Nvidia Shield TV yielded a perfect stream. My cousin who shares my library also has connectivity to the server as well.
Please feel free to ask any questions, I will post in the other thread as well to make sure that the word is passed around.
EDIT: Maybe it wasn’t my cookie / history clearing. 
looks like ATT/L3 fixed it, can connect to plex.tv now
Without more information like source IP and trace route outputs, it is hard to say why in your situation.
For me, the problem still exists.
So I have taken the time to setup a RaspberryPI VPN Router for just the plex.tv traffic. This is just a bandaid and is not sustainable because I think the IP addresses for plex.tv will change dynamically. Isn’t that the nature of Amazon and Azure hosted systems? So my bandaid works as long as those IP addresses for plex.tv don’t change, or I keep updating my internet router with the new IP addresses.
I can’t post the full details, but a summary of my workaround.
I use Private Internet Access for my VPN needs. So I Googled and found several posts about setting up a RaspberryPI as a VPN Router. I have several RaspberryPI’s sitting around waiting for a new lease on life. After I followed the blog posts to setup my RaspberryPI VPN router, I simply added a static route on my Internet router (call it your firewall or your gateway), to route the plex.tv IP addresses to the internal IP address of my RaspberryPI VPN router. Now every device on my internal network can access plex.tv for the authentication portions and since the actual streaming is local and does not require internet access, everything is working again without that delay for authentication with plex.tv.
I took my Android phone off my wifi and remote streaming to my Plex server is still working, as expected, but I like to be sure.
Hopefully AT&T and Level3 are close to finally resolving this issue and the updates they are doing are just taking time to update across their routers.
So keep in mind source vs destination. Your source traffic is not coming from port 32400. It will come from a random ephemeral port. You accessing your server on port 32400 has zero to do with your outbound traffic reaching AWS servers (where plex.tv is hosted). While this issue is going on, other people I’ve shared my libraries with, who are not on AT&T, have had no problem streaming from my server while I can’t even stream locally from the Android TV app. My initial workaround (before reconfiguring my static IPs) was to use an iOS device that had logged into plex while off my network, rejoin my network and then cast plex to the TV. That worked for me.
As an aside, the Plex Android TV app (not sure if it’s different from the normal Android app) most definitely does NOT work without access to Plex infrastructure on the internet. Even with my Plex server configured with the local subnet not requiring auth. Very frustrating to find out this way. I will be working on a backup plan for that testing with my internet actually off.
Well to my surprise plex is back to normal although I think I’m going to skip putting my server on my shield this time. But thanks for all your help I still might try to get something out of this from AT&T but I don’t want to waste my time with them from past experiences with them. They are a pain in my ass. I can’t wait until there’s more options where I’m located.
Yeah, I was surprised about this also. Is this something Plex can fix or is it Android TV related? Does AppleTV have this issue?
After Enabling my VPN everything worked… This is stupid for me to have to do this, but its a fix.
Can’t say what time it was corrected, but I just got home from work, tested, and all is working correctly now. I’m in Florida and my wan/external IP is still a 172.1/12 subnet IP. So it does seem resolved for me.
It was resolved during the change management window in the early AM.
Lol, so I did get a follow up call yesterday from the first level guy I talked to on Tuesday, but I wonder if that dude and the other AT&T folks that promised follow up calls will still call now that it’s fixed to confirm.
