Server Version#: 1.20.1.3252
Player Version#: 4.34.4
Hello everyone,
Sorry if this is a simple thing, or has been answered before, but I haven’t found an answer and it’s driving me crazy.
We receive our internet connection from a cable modem on the other side of the house, from which I ran an ethernet cable to a D-Link DIR-850l router on the other side of the house to provide wireless acces. My plex server is conected to my DIR-850l router, and my TV is connected to the main cable modem, and cannot find my plex server.
Trying to solve this, I came upon some possible answers:
-Turning on Remote Access, which worked, but was not optimal since there was no direct connection (as in, it did not behave as fast and smooth as if we were on the same network… which we are)
-Turning my secondary router into Access Point. This router is apparently a “Light” variant of another router, and doesn’t have a dedicated “Access Point” mode. To do so manually, I had to turn off DHCP, and set up IP’s manually for all of the devices connected to it… which was cumbersome, but doable. Only having problem with a chromecast, but found an answer online that I could turn on DHCP again, and basically just have a range of 1 IP address for the chromecast to connect to. I don’t know if this is the correct solution, and am only missing some settings on Plex itself, or on my cable modem… or if I’m SOL because the modem doesn’t have AP mode and is too underpowered to install dd-wrt or any other custom firmware.
The best solution I can come up with is get a Roku or Firestick or some device to plug into your TV so that it can access your Plex server on the wireless. You shouldn’t have any transcoding issues when playing anything on your TV.
The problem is that I need to have my server on the DIR-850L (because of the location of it), and the TV connected to the other wireless (also because of location/distance).
If you disable dhcp on your AP, you must then plug the ethernet wire coming from the main router, into one of the “LAN” ports. And not into the “WAN” port.
Before doing that, assign your AP a local IP address out of the local network IP range of the main router. Make sure they don’t use the same IP though.
That way, all your clients can reach the DHCP server on the main router.
Your Plex server will also talk to the main router directly, when asking for a port forwarding, which avoids the “double NAT” situation which caused your earlier troubles.
If you don’t have enough LAN ports on your router, a cheapo “Ethernet Switch” will extend their numbers easily. You can get 5-port models, which still support 1 Gbps speed, for as low as ~$20.
Never would have thought of it! Thank you so much! Just to clarify, this means that I would need to connect every device to the AP through the Ethernet port?
You might as well use WiFi for some devices. But keep in mind that with WiFi, there is no such thing as a guaranteed bandwidth. That’s why you should avoid it for the server itself and the media storage (NAS, file server etc.)
What I mean is, if I configure the router as an AP, connect the ethernet cable through a LAN port instead of the WAN, will the router itself serve as a wifi acces point?
