Hi there.
I recently changed from a business acc to residential acc with my ISP in NZ, (2degress) and found from reading your forums that I was having a DOUBLE NAT problem (the IP address in the settings on the ‘gateway’ was different from that IP address found by WHATSMYIP website).
Symptom being I was unable to get plex ‘remote access’ to stay connected even though it said it was, and it would slip back to “indirect”.
So turns out that their residential accounts are all behind a CGNAT and the only way I could get remote access to stay “connected” was to have a static IP.
So my Q is, does EVERY plex user in the world who uses remote access have a static IP?
Or is there a way around it?
Have I just been duped into paying extra for something I don’t need?
cheers for your ideas. CD
Yes CGNAT, you don’t need it. There are a couple ways you can go.
For myself I requested my ISP to Opt out of CGNAT, secondly is purchase a Static IP which in Australia is $10 monthly.
I would go down the road of Opt Out as it should be Free. Just remember when they switch it off to restart your Fibre connection Box, Router and Server. They should be able to do it Live/ straight away.
Basically, Rather than have one of the increasingly-scarce public IP addesses, your ISP gives your router a private IP, and routes all your traffic through a router of their own, and THAT router is the public-facing router with a public IP.
I’m lucky to not have an ISP that does CGNAT. My router has a public IP address, so I do not need to request a static IP address. TECHNICALLY, if I were to reboot my router I would get a brand new public IP from the pool that my ISP has. Plex (the company) is usually pretty good at detecting that my house’s IP changed, and updates it in their system, so that the next time a client connects, they get the new IP of my house automatically. I also own a domain, and use a form of DDNS to update that domain with my current IP every 5 minutes, so I told Plex to use my domain as well.
NONE of this helps you however. Call up your ISP, and ask about getting out from their CGNAT. If you can “opt out” of it, that’s great. If you have to purchase a static IP from your ISP in order to be out of it, well, that’s what you have to do. There is nothing a server behind a CGNAT can do to allow unsolicited inbound traffic (like a Plex client streaming your media) to work, it’s your ISP.
Thanks all for your input. I tried but they do not allow an opt-out, so there it is. Irony is that I was trying to save a few $ by moving to a cheaper package, and now paying for a static IP has reduced that saving. It was free with the business acc.
cheers CD
IPv6 at some point will sort this out, however currently if the following is true it could be something to look into:
1 - Do 2degrees offer a reasonable static IPv6 address space (most ISPs in Australia do)
2 - Do you have the ability to have IPv6 from client to server when out of the house (dual stack)?
3 - I’m not sure about this one, however my reading indicates that Plex may have removed IPv6 support in the New Experience clients, so if you just need Plex Desktop Players this might work
Seems some people have been able to set up Tailscale (a VPNish system) to bypass CGNATs. I haven’t looked into it, but by the sound of it you set up a Tailscale program on your computer that calls out to Tailscale (the company) and it develops a tunnel from your house to the company. Now, anyone can hit the other end of the tunnel (the Tailscale end) with a client and they end up inside your network.
If this works the way it sounds, it might even bypass the “remote streaming needs a Plex Pass” restriction…
Edit: Forgot to link the reddit post that describes how to do Tailscale for Plex:
