Server Version#: 1.40.4.8679 Says Updated Available Please Update Manually (Listed under Server-General at myip:32400/web)
Player Version#: 4.135.1 (Listed under Plex Web at app.plex.tv)
Further Information: My ISP AT&T, I have Fiber. My gateway is the BGW210-700.
This has been driving me absolutely bonkers since Monday, July 29th. Some time between 3pm PDT and 7pm PDT, I can no longer access my Plex Server over LAN or remotely. I did not change ANYTHING in my network, server or Plex from when it was working to when it stopped.
It’s fairly well documented that people have had a slew of issues running Plex when they are using an AT&T Fiber Gateway. The only thing that I had to configure 2 years ago when I initially set up Plex on my network, was opening port 32400 in my AT&T Gateway. I did that in order to get Remote Access to work. Local had already been working. After opening the port 2 years ago, I’ve never had a problem.
I have troubleshot this with a Network Engineer friend who is a lifelong Plex user and he is also stumped and has never seen this before. I am very green to all of this, but I trust his advice and knowledge. He believes this is an issue with AT&T.
Things we have discovered that are strange:
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I cannot access plex.tv/claim while connected to my home network regardless of what device I try it from. I have tried to connect to plex.tv/claim from my laptop, my wifes laptop and my phone. On both laptops, I have tried from 3 different browsers both normal as well as incognito/private. We also tried to claim the server inside the docker container’s Console utilizing the claimpms.sh file…When checking the logs, the container gets hung up on verifying the token.
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When I disable wifi on my phone, or use my phone’s hotspot for wifi on my laptop, it immediately loads plex.tv/claim
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Also strangely, I lost access to my work unions website from my home network around the same time. Since then, I also noticed I can’t access ubuntu.com. Ubuntu, my union and Plex.tv/claim all TIMEOUT.
Things we have tried to fix this:
First Big Fix we tried:
I configured a Pepwave Mobile Router with my simcard in it. I set the router to match my AT&T Gateways IP and subnet. I connected the Mobile Router to my server via ethernet and connected to my laptop via wifi.
THIS WORKED! I was able to bring my server online, Claim my server in the WebUI and play my server’s media on my laptop (over LAN).
Next, I hotswapped my server’s ethernet cable from the mobile router to my AT&T. Gateway and connected my laptop to the AT&T Wifi network…
THIS WORKED! I still had access on my laptop to the Plex server and was still able to play media from it.
At this point I thought we had solved it; however, when I opened Plex on a local client device (Chromecast with Google TV connected over ethernet to my AT&T Gateway) it said my server was OFFLINE.
Sad Face…
Second Big Fix we Tried:
We configured my AT&T BGW210-700 into IP Passthrough mode and used my Pepwave MAX BR1 as the router for my home network.
My network engineer buddy went through every setting of this with me to insure it was done correctly and we were able to successfully passthrough everything to the Pepwave router; however, I STILL couldn’t access plex.tv/claim or my union’s website.
At this point, I factory reset everything just to get back to a state of normalcy. I factory reset my AT&T BGW210-700, and also “reset” (just powered it off and back on) the A&T ONT box.
Not shockingly, this also didn’t solve my problems.
Things I haven’t tried yet, but will get around to in the next 2 weeks:
One reddit post recommended setting the AT&T Gateway into “Default Server” mode instead of IP Passthrough and configuring that. My engineer buddy said he doesn’t think that will present any different results than when we tried the IP Passthrough, so we haven’t tried it.
I will be purchasing a dumb switch and seeing if I can put the dumb switch between the ONT and the AT&T Gateway. In essence, I’m going to try and trick the network so it uses the AT&T Gateway only to Authenticate the ONT, but then will use my personal router for everything else…I have no idea how this works, but we’ll see.
On Thursday, I called AT&T:
ANYWAY, after spending 26 actual hours with my buddy trying to trouble shoot this over a 3 day period, I called AT&T on Thursday to see if they could provide any insight. I explained the issues to the AT&T Technical Support Agent and ended with, “Basically the issue i’m running into is that I can’t access plex.tv/claim or icg600.com from my home network”
She had me try a couple things and on her end she ran a ping and trace route to each of the sites. What she told me was able to access both sites from her network, but the Trace Route times out.
She said at this point there is no further help she can provide. I asked if I could open a claim or a ticket for this to be escalated to their engineers and she said, “No. We don’t do claims/tickets and we don’t have engineers in support. It’s basically a luck-of-the-draw with who answers your call from Tech Support and what their knowledge base is.”
I asked what she thinks my next course of action is, because I really don’t want to have to switch my ISP to Spectrum (I still have nightmares from dealing with them), but that’s seeming like the only option.
Her response was that I should reach out to the hosts of both websites and see if they have my IP address blocked or all AT&T IP’s blocked for some reason…I reached out to my union’s webadmin and the “IT Dept” is looking into it, but I haven’t received a direct response yet. I know Plex doesn’t have a “technical support” email or phone number, so I figured posting here was the next best thing.
If you’re still here, thank you for taking the time to read this novel and I will be eternally grateful for any help or insight you can provide!
