Buffering when playing locally on the LAN

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
1

Server Version#: 1.15.4.994
Player Version#: latest iOS Apple TV version

The latest issue is that when trying to pay back an MKV locally on the LAN (“Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse”) it keeps pausing. Everything is hardwired with gigabit Ethernet. I watched the Plex dashboard, and it would switch from direct playing the file at about 40mbps to saying “buffering”. I switched the client to transcode at 20mbps, and that was no better. The Synology CPU was at around 10%, so it wasn’t stressed, but the buffering kept happening.

Plex via the Web interface was hanging and overall very sluggish. I looked in the server log and found these errors:

May 19, 2019 16:22:50.114 [0x7ff47d788700] ERROR - Error issuing curl_easy_perform(handle): 7
May 19, 2019 16:22:50.114 [0x7ff47d788700] WARN - HTTP error requesting POST http://127.0.0.1:32600/devices/discover (0, No error) (Failed to connect to 127.0.0.1 port 32600: Connection refused)
May 19, 2019 16:22:53.978 [0x7ff47eef8700] DEBUG - NotificationStream: Removing because of error
May 19, 2019 16:22:55.952 [0x7ff3fdfc5700] ERROR - Error issuing curl_easy_perform(handle): 7
May 19, 2019 16:22:55.952 [0x7ff3fdfc5700] WARN - HTTP error requesting GET https://192-168-1-2.71d6e016056a404495b03ae7031210c7.plex.direct:32400 (0, No error) (Failed to connect to 192-168-1-2.71d6e016056a404495b03ae7031210c7.plex.direct port 32400: Connection refused)
May 19, 2019 16:22:56.145 [0x7ff3fe88f700] ERROR - Error issuing curl_easy_perform(handle): 7
May 19, 2019 16:22:56.145 [0x7ff3fe88f700] WARN - HTTP error requesting GET https://192-168-1-2.21199e52198c45b184250fb3842b6ccb.plex.direct:32400 (0, No error) (Failed to connect to 192-168-1-2.21199e52198c45b184250fb3842b6ccb.plex.direct port 32400: Connection refused)
May 19, 2019 16:22:56.708 [0x7ff3fee6b700] ERROR - Unknown metadata type:
May 19, 2019 16:22:57.180 [0x7ff466552700] ERROR - Unknown metadata type:
May 19, 2019 16:23:00.336 [0x7ff3fdfc5700] ERROR - Error issuing curl_easy_perform(handle): 7
May 19, 2019 16:23:00.336 [0x7ff3fdfc5700] WARN - HTTP error requesting GET https://192-168-1-86.cfe2e8f55fa04575ba91c03f1e27346e.plex.direct:32400 (0, No error) (Failed to connect to 192-168-1-86.cfe2e8f55fa04575ba91c03f1e27346e.plex.direct port 32400: No route to host)
May 19, 2019 16:23:00.887 [0x7ff3fe5a1700] ERROR - Error issuing curl_easy_perform(handle): 28
May 19, 2019 16:23:00.889 [0x7ff3feb7d700] ERROR - Error issuing curl_easy_perform(handle): 28
May 19, 2019 16:23:02.078 [0x7ff3fe2b3700] ERROR - Error issuing curl_easy_perform(handle): 28
May 19, 2019 16:23:07.077 [0x7ff3fee6b700] WARN - Connection Tester: Error testing media server Lumiere in 10000 ms.
May 19, 2019 16:23:07.487 [0x7ff47f1e6700] ERROR - Unknown metadata type:

@trumpy81 thanks for any insight you can provide here.

Plex Media Server Logs_2019-05-19_16-24-45.zip (2.6 MB)

2

If I may answer while Trumpy’s away?

May 19, 2019 16:23:00.336 [0x7ff3fdfc5700] WARN - HTTP error requesting GET https://192-168-1-86.cfe2e8f55fa04575ba91c03f1e27346e.plex.direct:32400 (0, No error) (Failed to connect to 192-

Your modem/router is has active DNS REBINDING protection enabled. This is how Plex finds other Plex hosts on your LAN. It does it by encoded name and not pure IP.

To resolve this, in your modem/router, allow private domain plex.direct

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Hah, of course ChuckPA, your answers are every bit as amazing and helpful! :smile:

I’m not sure if that’s a red herring; I only say that because I’m not familiar with that setting, but for at least a few weeks Plex worked OK on my Synology NAS.

And I just rebooted my Synology and, boom, everything is working OK again. I am deeply suspicious about the performance/stability of my Synology, but so far it’s proven to be incredibly difficult to diagnose what the problem is - it’s hard to go to Synology tech support and say “Something just doesn’t FEEL right about how slow it gets at times, how I need to reboot it once a week, etc.”.

I will look into that router setting through!

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The Synology is very stable in general. Yes, their tech support leaves a LOT to be desired.
The error in your logs is a real error. It will persist. It may not hamper playback but it will delay it.
Getting it resolved in the modem/router will help a lot. There must be a settting somewhere. All modern devices have them.

5

Hey Chuck, I’m unable to find a setting in my Netgear Orbi router that would allow me to whitelist the Plex domain, but I’ve posted in their forums in the hopes that someone will be able to point me in the right direction. I fear that Netgear may not expose this setting to end users though. We’ll see!

6

You may find that a customer support ticket (with the understanding not to make the info public) might also help in getting the answer you need.

Some routers don’t have the capability in their firmware. Vendors are protecting users from themselves, in their opinion.

7

Netgear is such a delightful company that if you try to contact their support team, they check your warranty and past one year you can’t even open a support ticket to ask a question. :triumph: I haven’t been able to find a single reference anywhere to being able to change this, and I’ve spent a lot of time looking.

This makes me think that if users like me have routers that can’t make this change, maybe it’s not something Plex can rely on being changed?

8

Now you know why I bought a Netgate (pfSense) box.

Technically, who is Plex to mandate to manufacturers what to do? (tail wagging the dog, isn’t it?)

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Heh, I’m not quite enough of a networking power user to get a pfSense box. :wink: What I meant was that Plex is coded in such a way that they are relying upon routers allowing DNS rebinding, and not all routers allow it, and there’s nothing people like me can do about it. I have no idea how common of a problem this is, but if most consumer-grade routers block DNS rebinding as a way of protecting users, Plex shouldn’t be relying on it as a solution to solve…whatever it solves. I’m not clear exactly what function requires the DNS rebinding.

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