Server Version#: 1.19.1.2630
Player Version#: 4.30.2
Good day,
I got a dedicated server far away from home with NVMe SSDs, RAID0 Enterprise HDDs and a gigabit connection to the internet. That’s where I host one of my Plex servers. Since I am the owner of the content I use the Download function quite often to grab the content locally too. However the download speed is strange. Sometimes 221 Mbps, sometimes only like 19-27 Mbps which is strange to expect from my home internet that’s 2/1 Gbit/s. Meanwhile if I start to download using an nginx dirlisting from the exact same folder what Plex uses to fetch the content from, I can max out the gigabit speed of the dedicated instance. Seemingly there is some strange ratelimit from Plex’s side or something else… I didn’t set anything at Remote Control for bw limit so I assume it’s unlimited this way.
I have confirmed that my connection to the plex server is direct connection since I can see that the requests are being resolved to my dedi’s IP.
The CPU usage meanwhile on the dedi is not more than 3-4%, the load seems to be good too.
My client machine is powerful enough too as I said it can grab using nginx extremely fast. I am suspecting Plex to be the culprit.
For the downloads I use the latest stable FIrefox and app.plex.tv. However I also tried a simple script I wrote using plexapi’s download() calls, and I experience the same speeds really.
What can I do? Are there any limits on this feature?
Could aria2c be used with many connections to grab the stuff faster? Or the plex web server doesn’t support from-to bytes headers?
Hi diniboy,
Did you try iperf-ing your connection? If this is faster, it is actually possible that you hit a Plex Limit there. But to be fair, Plex is designed for streaming media, not downloading media, and I don’t know if they use some weird or slow protocol for downloading…
Thanks for the quick response. Basically of I get a gigabit speed from the server to the pc with nginx I should get a good speed with plex too, the network simply can’t be the bottleneck. But when I bought the server I certainly did iperf tests and I can certainly assure you the network data transmission works like a charm. The culprit can only be something around Plex.
Plex simply uses HTTP(S) protocol in my case directly between the server and PC. Just as in my nginx server’s case.
Hi,
Is it faster if you download it on the sever itself? Basically the same as on your client; (Remote Desktop to server), open plex in browser, downloading there?
Each player specifies the requested default bitrate to use in its settings.
If the speeds are fast enough, set to “Original” for “Remote”. The default for remote on most players is 2 Mbps.
Excuse me sir but I think we are talking about two different things. I mentioned pure downloading of the original media file. There is an option for every movie type content that’s labelled as “Download”. Then Plex simply acts like a HTTP server and streams the content as a file that my browser can download. No transcode nor bw reservation should happen.
I guess your server is running into “too fast”-issues. Ask the devs if you’re really downloading GBs and GBs of data in a hurry.
Edit: Can’t reply anymore, so this is my way to go:
Your Server is probably too fast. You would need to contact the devs or go for a third party (Web-)Server.
I just wanted to grab a self recorded camera footage which is ~30 GBs. The dl speed was around 230 Mbps and not more than that. Then downloaded a few other footages and it was constantly around that. Then it got even worse by one file, only 19-27 Mbps dl speed. Imo that’s ridiculously slow…
We are already thru that. See Download speed is ridiculously slow and my answer below. The network is fine. And with nginx I am able to get the max gigabit speed out of the server.
The NUC8’s Network is the Akitio 10 GbE external (small brick)
Akitio T3TGAA0008Y000 T3-10G: (Thunderbolt3 to 10G Adapter with Intel Alpine Ridge + Aquantia AQC107S)
I have made some benchmarks and it seems to be related to plexapi. It uses some hacky way to retrieve the media files and it’s not really being tolerated by Plex. Restarting the server seems to solve the issue and everything is on full again. Thanks for your time and effort!
