In my home, I have two routers that are on the same network. The CenturyLink router in my living room is primary and has my Samsung TV hard-wired into it. A Cat6 cable connects to this router to Port #3 (not the WAN port) on a Netgear R6220 router in my office, where my Plex server (Win7 laptop) resides and is also hard-wired into this Netgear router. All devices on my network have been assigned static IPs as well.
My PlexPass auto-renewed last Tuesday and ever since then I have been unable to access Plex via the app on my Samsung TV. I even connected my Plex server directly to the same CenturyLink router that the TV is connected to and still it didn’t work. Also, it’s worth noting that in my Plex Server settings, it shows that my server’s Remote Access function is not working. I shouldn’t need this to access Plex on my TV, as everything is on the same network though to my knowledge.
Can anyone help me understand what’s wrong with my setup?
Try logging into the server, go to server settings / devices and delete the Samsung TV entry. You’ll have to sign back into PLEX from the TV but that may work. Good Luck!
If you are using two different routers in your home, this is 90% of the problem.
Retasking a router as a poor-man’s switch on the same subnet is fraught with issues. The same is true (as I once did) when retasking a DSL modem w/wifi as my AP. Packets are NOT forwarded and PMS will be instantly confused because you appear to have two IGD (Internet Gateway Devices). PMS will tell the netgear to “open a port” which is completely ineffective since it must be done at the primary.
Broadcast and multicast packets, which PMS uses, also do not cross router boundaries. 192.168.0.x (where the TV might be) cannot broadcast onto 192.168.1.x (where the server might be) is a perfect example Routers don’t pass them by design (you’d have a broadcast storm and no internet if they did). This is what keeps LAN traffic from clogging WAN (internet) traffic.
Remote Access can not traverse a Double NAT (router behind a router) WAN -> Lan 1 -> Lan 2 -> PMS without an explicit set of static routes and forwarding rules.
There is a simple solution you can try first. Replace the Netgear in your office with a switch and make sure everything is on the same subnet leaving your primary modem/router as it is… aka. “Go Simple”.
@bbubulka said:
Try logging into the server, go to server settings / devices and delete the Samsung TV entry. You’ll have to sign back into PLEX from the TV but that may work. Good Luck!
I’ll give that a shot tonight. I had already tried logging out of Plex on the TV and re-connecting but that didn’t work.
@ChuckPA said:
If you are using two different routers in your home, this is 90% of the problem.
Retasking a router as a poor-man’s switch on the same subnet is fraught with issues. The same is true (as I once did) when retasking a DSL modem w/wifi as my AP. Packets are NOT forwarded and PMS will be instantly confused because you appear to have two IGD (Internet Gateway Devices). PMS will tell the netgear to “open a port” which is completely ineffective since it must be done at the primary.
Broadcast and multicast packets, which PMS uses, also do not cross router boundaries. 192.168.0.x (where the TV might be) cannot broadcast onto 192.168.1.x (where the server might be) is a perfect example Routers don’t pass them by design (you’d have a broadcast storm and no internet if they did). This is what keeps LAN traffic from clogging WAN (internet) traffic.
Remote Access can not traverse a Double NAT (router behind a router) WAN → Lan 1 → Lan 2 → PMS without an explicit set of static routes and forwarding rules.
There is a simple solution you can try first. Replace the Netgear in your office with a switch and make sure everything is on the same subnet leaving your primary modem/router as it is… aka. “Go Simple”.
Everything you just described makes sense. I did eliminate the Netgear router and ran everything through the CenturyLink router though, which would have accomplished what you just described, and still had no success. Unless there’s something I’m missing…
Are you using UPnP or manual port forwarding?
We’re investigating what looks like an issue with UPnP in PMS 1.7.5. The specifics are: PMS ‘maps’ a valid port. Sometime later when it performs its routine connectivity test it gets back a zero (0) as the port number and not the established UPnP port. When this happens, Remote Access disconnects.
Manual port forwarding (with some refreshing, restarting PMS once it goes green, and then not touching it takes care of that facet)
Since this difficulty started, have you signed your devices out and back into your account?
With respect to accessing the Plex app on your TV (settings in particular), even with all traffic local to your LAN, unless you explicitly give your LAN permission to run without authentication, it will require your TV to authenticate.
Please check the following:
- Settings - Server - Network for
Secure connections : Preferred or Secure connections: Disabled.
-
List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth Here you can enter the IP address of the TV or your entire LAN spec and disable all auth.
@ChuckPA said:
Are you using UPnP or manual port forwarding?
We’re investigating what looks like an issue with UPnP in PMS 1.7.5. The specifics are: PMS ‘maps’ a valid port. Sometime later when it performs its routine connectivity test it gets back a zero (0) as the port number and not the established UPnP port. When this happens, Remote Access disconnects.
Manual port forwarding (with some refreshing, restarting PMS once it goes green, and then not touching it takes care of that facet)
Since this difficulty started, have you signed your devices out and back into your account?
With respect to accessing the Plex app on your TV (settings in particular), even with all traffic local to your LAN, unless you explicitly give your LAN permission to run without authentication, it will require your TV to authenticate.
Please check the following:
- Settings - Server - Network for
Secure connections : Preferred or Secure connections: Disabled.
List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth Here you can enter the IP address of the TV or your entire LAN spec and disable all auth.
I do not have any port forwarding rules in place right now. In the settings, Secure connections is set to Preferred and I added the TV’s IP address to the “List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth.” After doing this, the Plex app on the TV still can’t access the Plex server.
I also tried disabling uPNP just for giggles and that didn’t work either.
I tried deleting the Samsung TV from the device list in the Plex server settings and that didn’t help either.
So you’re saying that if I put a manual port forwarding rule in for Port 32400 on my router that the current uPnP issues you mentioned should be eliminated and everything should function correctly? Because I believe I tried that prior to posting in this forum and the issue still persisted.
Not sure if it’s related at all, but when I try to enable Remote Access, it turns green for a half-second and connects but them immediately turns red and says “Not available outside your network”
Green -> Red has been found. We have a work around while they make the changes.
This work around is what I’ve shared so far.
It’s a little different for everyone (actual latency between you and a Plex cloud server).
The steps are:
- ‘tear down’ the UPnP you have (setup manual port forwarding to your static IP)
- Set up the manual port forwarding and let it attempt.
- If it goes green and flashes back red. Try it from remote anyway. About 50% of the time it’s actually there.
- If it is there, don’t touch it and ignore the Red.
- Restart PMS. It will come back up green and stay there. Don’t touch it. The restart settles it in
- If you don’t have connectivity yet. Refresh / retry. it will connect up.
- When it does, do step #5 above.
Yes, Kludgy as H*** but works and as told to be by engineering.
What’s happing is a race condition. PMS local has the port number and sends it. Plex.tv sends it back and it goes green (good so far)
Plex.tv tests connectivity but sends port #0 (BAD) . breaks the connection.
Once it sends a good port number. It keeps it and all is good.
You CAN edit Preferences.xml and help it a great deal but a pain to do.
The results after doing that are interesting. I kept the TV’s IP in the “List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth” section, turned uPnP off on my router, and set a port forwarding rule for the IP address of my Plex server.
In following your instructions exactly as laid out, Remote Access every time would stay green for a longer time now, between 10-15 seconds, and then turn red again. At no point during this whole process was I able to connect to the Plex server from my TV.
It’s beginning to sound as if I have no choice but to wait until the known issue with uPnP is resolved and then keep my fingers crossed that the resolution fixes my issue as well.
That’s the bizarre part. On LAN, you do not need external access. All you need is both signed into the same account. PMS and the TV both reach out and authenticate through a connection which originates INSIDE (hence no remote access requirement). Plex.tv “replies” to the authentication request with Yes or No.
I suggest you leave your configuration as it is.
The last thing to do is uninstall the App from your TV and install it again fresh. Doing so will clear out its configuration and allow you to sign in again clean, with fresh auth tokens.
I uninstalled/reinstalled the Plex app on the TV to no avail. I completely agree with you on this being bizarre. Even taking the Netgear router out of the equation, everything is on the same LAN and therefore should have no problem communicating back and forth. Part of me can’t help but wonder if there is some feature or setting in the CenturyLink router itself that is having a hand in these problems.
I was able to take a snip of what happens when I attempt to enable Remote Access btw. It stays green while the Private and Public IP addresses show “Unknown” but as soon as actual IPs populate in there is when Remote Access goes red.
What internal IP does your Samsung get? What internal IP does your server get? Are they on the same range? Also, “office” and “laptop” to me smells like as if you perhaps might be running a VPN or such on it. Try deinstalling that for testing purpose.
No VPNs in place today. My Lenovo laptop serves as my Plex server. When I say “office,” I’m just talking about the room the laptop is in being different from the room that the TV is in.
I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I do know for a fact that the TV, router, and Plex server are all assigned IPs between 192.168.0.101 and 192.168.0.120 (not at home right now to look up what the exact numbers are).
