So - I was troubleshooting a remote client’s inability to play a 4k Movie at full quality, and started going through all of my server’s settings.
I’d never heard of the “Enable Relay” setting, and discovered it was checked - furthermore, I saw that this means that all remote traffic is proxied/relayed through Plex, therefore limiting bandwidth. WTF. OK, so I disabled it, thinking it was enabled by mistake (it was, by the software engineers - why on Earth they’d want to all of the sudden get EVERYBODY’S traffic going through their network is beyond me). So then, remote access stops working from multiple platforms (Apple TV, and Android at least), but works from a remote Web Browser.
I’m a Network Engineer/Architect, and run a very powerful, but very simple Firewall/Network setup. I’ve confirmed that traffic is making it through my FW as usual (nothing has changed about ANY of my setup in over 2 years). Remote Access is actually GREEN under the R/A Settings, which makes it even more surprising. I disabled and re-enabled this after the Relay setting disable, but no luck with Remote Players working (green check mark is lit up again/still).
I’m pulling logs shortly, which is about the only thing I can think of looking into at this point.
Anyone having this particular issue? I’m seeing a lot of people having remote access issues, but not necessarily after disabling the Relay
That’s not correct.
The setting allows remote connections to be established through a plex relay server if the client cannot establish a direct connection to your server (but the relay can). If you’re on a relayed/indirect connection, traffic will however indeed be restricted to 1Mbps (2Mbps for Plex Pass members).
Many users have remote access issues for various reasons – some due to a bad Plex configuration, some weird network setup (incl. VPN without considering certain technical dependencies) – down to issues induced by their ISP (e.g. putting them behind a CGNAT). Sometimes it’s as simple as a using a DNS server that doesn’t allow resolving certain Plex domains.
What do you mean by the remote access status indicator being “lit up again/still”? Does it occasionally go off or did you just want to emphasize it’s still showing a successful remote connection?
Edit: that you experience/describe implies that your server can reach Plex’ backend fine when verifying the remote access status but your client cannot establish a direct connection. With the relay option disabled this fallback is gone and therefore your remote client appears to fail to stream content from your server.
Question should now be… why is that
“Relay” enabled means I’m relaying traffic through Plex, so I would indeed be restricted in bandwidth - which explains why in Dashboard, I frequently see people only transcoding/streaming at a low bandwidth.
When I’m saying the Remote Access check is still lit up, I’m saying that I disabled remote access, disabled Relay, and then re-enabled RA, and its green again.
I feel like your wink is telling me something that I’m not getting that’s simple. I’ve covered everything but changing DNS. My ISP shouldn’t be doing anything crazy with NAT, and I understand CGNAT very well. If I can reach my server from anywhere in the world on 32400 (whether by telnet to that port, HTTP to that port, etc.), see that traffic pass through my Cisco ASA FW, and have no FWs running on my PMS, there should be no reason a client can’t connect, but… here we are.
No hidden message in that smiley… I just didn’t want to sound like I wanted to tell you off.
When you check for active streams on your server’s dashboard, you should be able to easily identify relayed connections; each now-playing tile has a reference if the stream is local, remote or indirect.
Can you remotely access your server ok? Or do you experience the same as your users?
If the server itself is remotely accessible (and the remote access status indicator actually stays green), there could be some weird configuration on the client device/network.
