Firewall/Port Forwarding and Plex App/Web

General Discussions
1

Hello all, apologies if this is in the wrong forum but wasn’t sure where to post - or if this has been asked already.

I was wondering if anyone knew whether connecting to the PMS through the Plex App e.g. on Windows or iPhone or just connecting to it via browser used different ports than just connecting to the PMS directly with address:extport?

The reason for asking being that I have my firewall on the router to drop incoming connections except for port forwarding rules, and according to the PMS it is accessible from outside the network via manual external port. Now I can connect to the PMS directly via that port but if I use app.plex.tv or use one the client apps it can’t reach the server.

Any suggestions what I need to change or am doing wrong would be great.
Thanks all.

2

You should just need 1 port forwarded to Plex.

The default is 32400 but can be manually specified in the remote access settings.

You should be able to access it via -

Or your external IP:32400

3

Thanks for the reply nokdim, and I agree I thought that was how it works.

I can confirm that I can connect to the PMS at: externalIP:30500/web/index.html (30500 is the port set in PMS)

However using the Windows/iPhone app or https://app.plex.tv.desktop it is unable to connect to the PMS and says unavailable.

Is it perhaps that the Plex apps only connect via the default external port, although I’m sure I have had it working that way on an external port already.

4

OK - it would seem you are right, as one thing I hadn’t tried was restarting the server/NAS that PMS was installed on. Perhaps a restart is required for the PMS to update with the router/firewall settings, similar as to with a VPN running from the same server. Thanks again for your response though.

5

Yeah on initial setup clicking around can cause some instability and a restart clears all that out.
once setup you should be stable long term. Mine has been stable for years.