So I’m trying to be able to play an album from Bandcamp via voice activation on Alexa, and thus have ended up downloading it from Bandcamp, uploading to Plex, setting up the Plex skill on Alexa, and trying to go from there. But I keep hitting the “Not available outside your network” issue on Remote Access.
I have:
Manually specified the port 32400 in Plex
Set up a firewall rule with my IPv6 address, allowing “32400-32400” with protocol set to “both”
Set up a single port forward with both internal and external ports as “32400” and protocol set to “both”
When I click “Retry” in Plex it suggests it’s available for a short period (20-40 seconds) and then reverts back. If I ask Alexa to connect to it in the short time it thinks I’m connected (or after) she says “Your Plex server “NAME” appears to be online, but remote access is not available…”
I’m really not au fait with ports and servers and internet connections so have used various guides and forums to get to this point but clearly I’m missing something and need some more targeted support! Does anyone have any ideas?
Server Version#: 1.41.5.9522
Player Version#: Unknown
The remote status indicator turning from green to red means it’s not workstation all… it just took your PMS 20-40 seconds to conclude that check (showing a green status while doing so).
Have you already verified if your router’s WAN IP (public IP) and the specified public port are accessible from outside your home network? You can do that using a service like canyouseeme.org — that can also help to verify that the IP visible to the outside matches the one seen on your router.
I really don’t know what any of this means. I did run the test for the link you provided using port 32400 and it says “Error: I could not see your service on #### on port (32400) Reason: Connection timed out”. Does this help?
It implies there’s a problem on the internet side – could be your ISP is blocking certain traffic or the configuration of the router isn’t allowing the traffic.
Does the IP (####) match the one you get to see on your router as its WAN address?
I’ve been discussing this extensively on Reddit and it sounds like my problem is having CGNAT internet, whereby paying more would the only solution and not a viable one seeing as this whole endeavour is purely so I can play one music album (bought and downloaded via Bandcamp and not available anywhere else) via Alexa voice command. I believed that Plex was the answer based on my research but clearly not based on my specific internet circumstances, so I think it’s back to the drawing board for me!
You could ask your ISP if they’re able/willing to provide a “publicly routable IPv4 address” – technically, you don’t need a static IP. As pointed out in that threat, many ISPs will only offer you a static ip (at a price).
If it’s purely about listening to the music… you could also consider dropping Alexa from the equation (as it’s Alexa that needs your Plex Media Server to be available remotely).
Yeah I’ll give them a call tomorrow when they open and see if there are any options available to me.
And I do listen via Bluetooth on Alexa but it’s a pain and frankly when I started on this journey to get it set up some other way I didn’t dream it would be so complicated and now I’m riddled with sunk cost fallacy and cannot let go of the idea until I’m really forced to admit defeat.
