I’ve been using plex for about 5 years. Just moved and tried to set up my home network and plex is making me go crazy!
I’m BOTH having my plex app on Roku within the same LAN not recognize the server as being local (relayed connection only) AND not being able to open the port properly for PMS to see outside at all!
Here’s my setup.
FiberOptic Huawei Router (HG8245Q2) set to 192.168.100.1
Port 1 -> Adaptec MOCA adapter (1) ->coax run-> Linksys EA3500 (1) 192.168.100.2 ->wifi-> Roku Plex App (DHCP assignment)
Port 2 -> Adaptec MOCA adapter (2) ->coax run-> Linksys EA3500 (2) 192.168.100.3 ->ethernet->Plex Media Server on Windows (static IP assigned).
The two linksys routers are set up as access points with their own static IPs, using the Huawei DHCP for assignments. Both have linksys NAT turned off. All three routers are forwarding the proper port for the PMS. All three have uPnP turned on.
I’ve followed the guidance and am not behind a double nat. All the LAN IP addresses are within the same subnet and both the PMS and the roku are showing up within the DHCP table!
But still! Internally, my roku can’t see the PMS as being local AND I can’t make external connections that aren’t relayed.
Server Version#: 1.18.0.1944
Player Version#: Current Roku build
Regarding the inability of your internal client(s) to see PMS, are one or more of your routers blocking broadcast traffic? That would cause your clients and PMS to be unable to see each other. You could try manually configuring the server’s address on your client:
In the Plex app on your Roku device, highlight your user and click OK.
Navigate to Settings -> Manual Connections.
Click Connection and enter the IP address of your server.
As for remote access, you may want to disable UPnP and rely on manual port forwarding only. If the Linksys routers are set to Bridge Mode you should only need to set the forwarding rule on your Huawei router.
Thanks for your response. Manual connections failed - both from Plex on Roku and testing on iOS.
Switched the linksys routers into bridge mode and turned off uPnP both there and on the Huawei. No change.
Wanted to provide some other networking details in case that helps.
Both of the static IPs on the Linksys routers have the huawei gateway IP set as their primary DNS, backups are cloudflare and google dns. Both of the linksys routers static IPs are below the range assigned by the DHCP on the huawei, but in the same subnet.
I’ve set the huawei to assign the plex server a static IP based on MAC address. That IP/device is visible in the DHCP table, as are the roku and ios devices I tried to test from. The huawei port forwarding options recognize the PMS IP and associate the correct device name to it. I followed the portforward.com recommendations for setup for this router type. PMS itself is using the same port internally and externally (manually specified).
In my old config, I could even access plex dashboard in web-browsers while in network via the PMS’s IPADDRESS:32400 or PMS’s //devicename:32400 - neither work now. I can’t even ping the PMS IP from the command line.
How would I check if the router is blocking broadcast traffic?
I’m pulling out my hair here. It doesn’t make any sense! What am I missing?
You definitely want your Linksys routers in bridge mode. You also want the up link from the main router to go into the internet port on each Linksys router.
You will also want to check the firewall on your PMS make sure it is set correctly.
And you will what to plug a computer into the same router your PMS is on and make sure you can see your PMS by IP there, check on your main router, and then the outer linksys. Basically check each section of your network
Lastly I don’t see that those Linksys routers you have are have coax for an input. I take it you have MOCA adapters at both ends of your coax runs? you may want to have both linksys routers close to your main router and just use simple Ethernet cables to verify it works before putting the MOCA adapters in play again.
Only if you want to complicate things. The OP would be far better off ignoring the internet port and just using the 4 Ethernet ports on each EA3500. Then disable DHCP and firewall on both. Just use them as overly expensive switches rather than mess around trying to get unnecessary routing working correctly.
Interesting. My experience with bridge mode on (sane) consumer routers has been just the opposite; it tends to simplify things significantly. In addition to performing the two actions you suggested, disabling DHCP and firewall services, it disables routing functions and allows for easier device management by still acting as a DHCP client to the upstream router. Without the latter, one would need to assign a static IP to the router in the LAN’s address space in order to manage it.
I tend to give all my networking equipment static IPs anyway. I know I could do the same with DHCP reservations but I like being able to give them all IPs within a specific range and know which device is at which address. I’d also expect any reasonable consumer router to be able to obtain an address via DHCP through the switch ports without needing to turn on bridge mode.
As for disabling DHCP, firewall and routing, you shouldn’t have to do that if you’re only using the switch functionality (i.e. the ‘ethernet’ ports). It’s purely a precautionary measure and removes one more possible, if unlikely, point of failure.
The only real time I would put a router into bridge mode is if I needed it to connect to the internet, but then wanted to use a different device to do the actual routing of my network traffic out into the wider world.
-> coax run-> Adaptec MOCA adapter (3) - >ethernet-> Linksys EA3500 (2) 192.168.100.3 ->ethernet->Plex Media Server on Windows (static IP assigned).
2: I moved the up (from the MOCA adapters) into the internet port instead of just port 1. Didn’t seem to have any impact on anything.
3: Plugged my laptop directly into the same linksys as the PMS and wasn’t able to even ping the IP for the PMS (no port specified).
4: checked firewall settings on the PMS and PMS.exe is excluded and the port is opened.
I don’t understand why the PMS is invisible to other devices on the by IP but is showing up in the DHCP table fine. It is able to do relayed connections fine and the up/down speeds I’m getting via the PMS are plenty fast! Possibly worth noting, from ALL devices on the network I can access all three routers via their IPs. But I can’t access the PMS via its IP.
Apologies. This was my original setup. Used as switch (bridge mode, firewall disabled, etc). Was unable to access PMS via IP address within the network, either via wifi or directly connected to ethernet port on same linksys router as PMS. Changed to internet port instead of lan port and didn’t fix this issue.
I think this is the only issue actually - port forwarding can’t work if the router isn’t able to forward to the IP and in-network plex client connections can’t work if they can’t connect to the PMS IP.
checked firewall settings on the PMS and PMS.exe is excluded and the port is opened.
The method I gave is basically following the instructions from Linksys for enabling Bridge mode.
I used to use your method some 15 years ago before they started putting a bridge mode in home based routers. I’d always cause some fun when those things would reset to factory.
I’d like to add, you cannot actually disable the routing functions on these without setting to bridge mode, that is what bridge mode does… the only way is to simply not use the internet port. When not in bridge mode you can only set a static IP for the lan interfaces. And, when in bridge mode they won’t grab a DHCP address if you do not plug the uplink from the main router into their internet port.
I also like to statically set my network equipment to specific IPs, either at the device or by dhcp reservations.
I don’t think it’s the fun wiring between your main router and the 2 linksys devices.
Your DHCP table will report that the IP is grabbed by the system regardless of if you can ping it or not. The fact that you cannot ping or open PMS by direct IP from a computer on the same switch tells me that it is a firewall issue on your PMS system.
I’m going to assume you are using the Windows firewall. If you are on public it will block pretty much everything, make sure it is set to private. in the “All an app or feature through Windows Firewall” make sure “File and Print sharing” is checked, otherwise ping won’t work. If you open resource monitor and go to the network tab, under listening ports you can scroll to the PMS port number and verify that it’s firewall status is “Allowed, not restricted”
If you are using a 3rd party firewall then you could disable your firewall temporarily for testing if that is the actual issue.
This was ultimately it. Played around with the PMS PC’s settings for a while. Looks like a home group sharing setting or something had been modified during an update and after a restart everything worked fine.
Unfortunately, I’d made a lot of changes before restarting, so I’m not 100% sure which change was the one that did the trick! I spent way too much time on the networking aspect of this when it was a local firewall/sharing setting the whole time!
