My internet has an outage, and while I thought I would be able to watch movies on my LOCAL plex server, I unfortunately found out I couldn’t because most apps, including plex web require an open connection to plex.tv first. I am enraged about this!! I can’t access my server that is sitting in my basement! My iOS apps still connected I’m guessing because of cached credentials, but everything else was unavailable because my server was trying to redirect to plex.tv for authentication, and it wouldn’t let me sync anything to my iPad. I used to be able to authenticate directly to my local server by going to ip.add.re.ss:32400 but that has gone away unfortunately. This has to be fixed. I find it unacceptable that I pay big bucks for a plex pass and I can’t use it when my internet goes down. Might as well be Netflix. What’s the point of having a local server if I can’t use it locally?!
Yes it is unfortunate but some Apps require internet to work -
If all else fails you can always use VLC and play media outside of plex…
Go to your Server Setting->Network and find the box that reads “List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth” - it’s about 2/3rds down. Last text box.
If you are using, say, the 192.168.87.x address range for your machines then enter “192.168.87.0/255.255.255.0”
In my case I use the 10.1.1.x range, so it’s “10.1.1.0/255.255.255.0”
You may need to restart your server for this to take effect.
I think I tried the networks allowed without auth before. But I also think when you create user profiles with plex pass it disables this feature. Also, it won’t let me log in to the server by web page in order to configure these settings.
Plex needs to find a way to make the server work locally without requiring an internet connection. I know for a fact this used to be possible. Only recently did it start redirecting to plex.tv for login.
I agree that this needs to be fixed. I recently had an internet outage and could not access content through the local network using the web interface. Please make sure that the server with user accounts work without internet access. It should not be a problem to sync and cache the family user credentials.
Plex with out an internet connection wont happen. They moved in a direction of streaming content from other sources that require the internet and also collect metadata of media while it’s being streamed. Pretty much, if you want to stream your media when your internet is offline, then Windows Media Player for sharing your media is your best bet.
I had the same question a few weeks ago…
II don’ts se any sense in forcing authentication over plex.tv on a local running server. Sure, collection of metadata won’t work without a internet connection…but the login? Seriously?
Maybe i we should give Emby a second chance…
@MediaUser#7 said:
I had the same question a few weeks ago…
II don’ts se any sense in forcing authentication over plex.tv on a local running server. Sure, collection of metadata won’t work without a internet connection…but the login? Seriously?
Maybe i we should give Emby a second chance…
The ultimate sense is money. Companies may give other reasons but in the end it’s all about money. They are a business and that requires money to grow and they have investors to keep happy. There isn’t anything wrong with Plex having a requirement for “always online.” They are the ones that own the software so they can develop it to their needs. It is a great thing that they still add features for non-paying customers. Still, they need to find ways to keep making money. As I said before, I’m glad they didn’t choose the Coinhive method.
