A friend with AT&T Uverse as his ISP can’t see my Plex Media Server. Everyone else that I have invited can, so it is obviously configured correctly on my end. I have had my sever up for nearly 3 years now, so this is not new to me.
I have remotely attached to his computer, and verified that he is doing everything correct. We have tried from his PC and his Vizio TV Plex App. Neither see my server. I logged into his AT&T modem, and it has an IPv6 public address, but everything on the LAN side of the modem IPv4. I have no problem pinging addresses all over the internet, but I am stomped as to what is preventing him from even seeing my server.
Thoughts anyone? Anyone dealt with this same problem with AT&T Uverse before?
Very likely it has to do with DNS.
Some ISPs provide DNS services which are very poorly resolving host names on the .direct TLD.
I recommend you to change the “DNS Server” entry in your friend’s router to a different DNS provider.
(for instance OpenDNS or Google [8.8.8.8 and/or 8.8.4.4]).
Afterwards, reboot first the router and after a few minutes all devices in the local network.
1. the DSL Modem that AT&T gave him is an Arris BGW210. Looking the model up online I discovered that it is not possible to configure the DNS settings for the device. 2. On his PC I manually entered both 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 into the ethernet adapter TCP/IP IPv4 DNS settings. after a reboot I verified that these are now the listed DNS servers.
2600:1700:1600:d9a0: :1 - This is the IPv6 address of AT&T’s DNS server
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4
After a reboot, I logged into https://www.plex.tv/, and his computer could still not see my server.
I use TDS in Madison, WI as my ISP. From his computer I was able to ping 216.165.129.158 and 216.170.153.146 which are TDS’s DNS server addresses. I tried to ping the public IP address if my DSL modem, and got no reply. But I don’t think a failed Ping test tells us much, because I was able to remote in to a computer at a business I own here in town, outside my home network, but also using TDS as the ISP. A Ping test from there to my public IP address failed as well. I did not look, but my DSL Modem or Araknis router could be set to not respond to a ping.
Either way, I don’t think the culprit is DNS not resolving the address.
Try remote pinging your IP address from remote to see if the router does in fact respond to an internet ping.
From your friends house try a tracert to your IP address.
You could also try to access your Plex server by IP address.
I tried to remote ping my IP address and it failed. I then logged into my router, and under firewall found a setting “Block WAN Requests”. With this setting turned off, I was able to the get a reply from my IP.
So that solves that question.
How would I go about accessing my Plex Media Server by IP address from outside my home network?
DDimit - Thanks for the help. I downloaded and ran the tracetcp tool. Other than a hiccup on hop 9, it was making it to my IP address just fine.
A few weeks passed by where we couldn’t get our schedules to work until this morning.
After the successful tracetcp results, I started looking elsewhere. I decided (I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner) to try logging in to Plex.tv through a browser on his computer with my personal credentials. Wouldn’t ya know, it worked just fine. I was beating my head against a wall thinking it was a TCP/IP or DNS problem, when it was just a problem with the Plex ID he created not properly linking up to my library. I deleted his original invite, and sent him a new one, and everything works fine now.
~Thanks again for your help!!
