What do you mean by hosting location? I will call CenturyLink soon, thanks for the input and I’ll come back with an update.
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Where the plex.tv servers are located.
Here are the results:
C:\WINDOWS\system32>nslookup plex.tv
Server: UnKnown
Address: 192.168.1.1
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: plex.tv
Addresses: 99.80.242.242
99.80.231.223
99.81.213.165
C:\WINDOWS\system32>ping -4 99.80.231.223
Pinging 99.80.231.223 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Ping statistics for 99.80.231.223:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),
C:\WINDOWS\system32>tracert -4 -d 99.80.231.223
Tracing route to 99.80.231.223 over a maximum of 30 hops
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 4 ms 3 ms 3 ms 207.109.2.19
3 5 ms 12 ms 14 ms 207.109.3.145
4 5 ms 4 ms 4 ms 216.160.19.2
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 108 ms 108 ms 107 ms 212.73.243.150
7 109 ms 108 ms 109 ms 52.95.60.84
8 109 ms 108 ms 108 ms 52.95.60.99
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 115 ms 116 ms 115 ms 54.239.42.134
11 117 ms 120 ms 116 ms 54.239.41.122
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 116 ms 116 ms 116 ms 52.93.6.152
14 122 ms 115 ms 115 ms 52.93.101.37
15 117 ms 117 ms 117 ms 52.93.101.12
16 116 ms 117 ms 116 ms 52.93.7.147
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.
Trace complete.```so
this is frustrating and I don’t understand it.
I called CenturyLink and we still haven’t technically solved the issue but the site and server work now. I can access plex.tv, app.plex.tv, and forums.plex.tv and sign in without issue.
We were going through all the regular internet rigmarole (“did you reset your router”“did you restart you computer”) and I eventually got through that I’d tried all that weeks ago AND ALL THESE OTHER THINGS (DNS, NAT, firmware up- and downgrades, firewall, etc) and got them to agree it was a very weird issue. Then he had me turn my VPN back on which was counter-intuitive to me, I thought for sure that wouldn’t change anything since Plex is notoriously strange behind VPNs.
Now I can login to everything and sign in on my local server.
I don’t understand why but naturally he said “problem solved!” and sent me on my way without uncovering the underlying issue.
I use PIA and I think they use their own DNS servers (PIA DNS) but that is all I got.
But now I can access and sign in to everything locally…but nothing’s available remotely. So I’ve switched one problem for another. But I think that’s a different post, maybe? I don’t know. Kind of a win/loss situation, I guess. Does anyone have another thought about why turning my VPN on magically fixed the authentication handshake?
I do not run a VPN, so I’ll be of limited help troubleshooting any VPN issues.
That written, where is the head of the VPN tunnel - PMS server, router, etc.?
Follow up on traceroute & ping.
Many hosting providers and some ISPs block traceroute and ping, so when they do not work, it is not necessarily a bad thing.
Since neither of us can ping/trace plex.tv, yet I can still login, it indicates the blocked pings/traces are not a problem.
app.plex.tv and forums.plex.tv are in different locations and I was able to trace to them. That’s why I mentioned those in my post. It is good you can reach app.plex.tv. It means you can resolve the addresses and your ISP is not blocking the path.
I did a bit more testing. I can traceroute to plex.tv if I use TCP port 443. Windows tracert uses TCP port 80, and unfortunately, there is no way to change the port number.
The Linux command structure is: traceroute -4 -T -p 443 app.plex.tv (on my Synology NAS, anyway).
-4 = use IPv4, not IPv6. Not needed if your system is IPv4 only.
-T = use TCP (Linux, unlike Windows, defaults to ICMP)
-p 443 = use port 443 (https), instead of port 80 (http)
So now with the VPN up, I can reach the forums, the app, and I can sign in to my server.
However, it’s no longer available remotely. I tried the bat file here after putting in my gateway and running as administrator but it doesn’t seem to work and I’m not a networking guru.
Has anyone ever run into plex being geoblocked before? This is all very, very strange.
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