I wasn't sure in which of the PMS subforums to put this (since it is not related to only one OS) so I thought that I put it in general discusion and feel free to let me know if I have to go.
Recently I have been forced to use a double NAT since I wanted to use my personal router which is way better than my ISP's but I cannot remove the ISP's one since it has to control TV and VoIP. What I did was to set my router's ip as DMZ in the ISP's router and manage the NAT of my house with mine. It has worked fine for all services that I have like Couchpotato or sabnzd which I can access remotely. But it seems not to be working with PLEX. It says that it is connected but I cannot see it outside my home network.
I would like to ask, is this a good setup for PLEX to work? Maybe the problem has nothing to do with the network and I have somethig wrong in my PLEX instalation (it does really weird stuff sometimes). Has any of you managed to remotely connec to PLEX in a double NAT situation?
The simplest solution would be to use your router as a switch.
This basically involves connecting your ISP router to your router via the LAN ports, ie leave the WAN port on your router vacant.
You might have to disable some other services on your router like DHCP if its active, if you google it there is lots on info on how to setup a router as a switch only.
I use double-NAT for the same reason as you; Either the ISP's router has to be used due to triple play (Internet access, IPTV and phone) or it should be replaced by a fully managed switch which would need to be configured with all the required VLAN's. I received an Experiabox from my ISP, this router has issues with UPNP and Multicasting. The flexibility of configuring it has also been disabled as much as possible by the ISP.
It being a good setup or not, that's a tricky question to answer while it mainly depends on the knowledge you have to deal with it. I don't have any issues with it, for me it's good enough. For others it's sometimes causing a huge head-ache, I would say it's not a good setup for them ;) Small word of advice, get it out of the DMZ and configure port forwards etc. Many routers disable forwarding rules or behave oddly when DMZ is enabled, port forwards are configured and uPNP enabled.
Just that you know, the PMS saying it's connected - that's seems to be producing unreliable results right now. I remember seeing a post from, if I remember correctly, SA2000 describing the issues with these green ticks.
I may be able to help you guys out if you could give me some information about the internet connection (type) and device(s) you are using. There are ways to get around your ISP modem/router. I myself have IPTV running and have my own router connected directly to the internet.
Thanks a lot for your answers! One of the reasons I wanted to use my router is because it appears that the ISP router is not transparent, I mean, even though you think you have open some ports, or you have done some configuration, the ISP overwrites in some cases, this is why using my router as a switch wouldn't be of any help because I want to control the trafic and do the NAT with it.
I somehow figured it out how to do it. I am not sure why in that way it works but it does. As I siad, I set up my router as DMZ in the ISP router. Then I manage ports and trafic of my network with my own router. Th problem was that the 32400 was no open for some reason. I opened the port 32400 on my ISP router to the IP of my router (which shouldn't be necesary because it is DMZ...) and when I did that PLEX is adcessible from outside!
No weverything seems to be working fine. Also, I have fiber and my ISP router only had 1 gigabit ethernet port... so only one of the PC was getting the 100Mb. Thanks a lot, loving ISP... With my gigabit router now I can get 100Mb in any pc (unless they are fighting for resources, but that is common).
I’m trying to do the same setup using my own router and the ISP router. My ISP router is from xfinity, so I’ll put in xfinity specific web app nav notes.
I made sure my router’s IP address was reserved (10.0.0.7) in the (Connected Devices section)
Enabled DMZ and set the DMZ IPv4 HOST to be the IP address of my router (Advanced > DMZ)
Enabled Port Forwarding and added a service (Plex, TCP/UDP, 32400-32400, 10.0.0.7) (Advanced > Port Forwarding)
