Buffering Issues During Remote Play

Plex Media Server Remote Access
1

Server Version#: 1.43.3.10896
Player Version#: 4.160.0

Hi. I’m experiencing excessive buffering and poor network performance during remote play. I think this is a remote play networking specific issue and not an issue with the transcoding itself (because even when streaming 480p low quality video files the buffering issue persists, and there is no spiking in my CPU utilization during transcoding), but I could be wrong - I am not sure. Currently I do not have hardware which is enabled for hardware-enabled transcoding.

While doing direct playback which skips the transcoding process on a local network machine, my network performance appears fine / stable:

Local Network Bandwidth
Local Network Bandwidth1029×386 82.6 KB

…But while doing transcoding to a remote machine, my network performance is very spikey as such:

Remote Network Bandwidth
Remote Network Bandwidth948×360 67 KB

I am on a Verizon Quantum router (model CR1000A) and am using manual port forwarding to forward port 32400 to my server. The Plex server settings indicate that my server is fully available outside of my network, and this status is constant and does not fluctuate.

Port Forward Settings
Port Forward Settings973×224 5.92 KB

Apologies for being a Plex noob, and happy to provide any additional information that could diagnose the issue.

Hardware:
TrueNAS - 25.10.3.1 - Goldeye

Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1240 v6 @ 3.70GHz
32GB RAM

No dedicated GPU

2

I’m seeing a similar behavior since the last update.

Never had this issues before.

In my case plex is running in my synology nas 920+

Buffering on client all the time that makes it unwatchable.

3

I cross posted this on reddit and a response inspired some troubleshooting which ultimately resulted in the issue being resolved for me. Was a setting in TrueNAS that limited Plex’s access to all of my CPUs that was impacting transcoding performance. Linking the Reddit post here for others: https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1vuh4vm/buffering_issues_during_remote_play/