Good afternoon all,
I am by no means a network specialist, and I am sorry if this has been posted elsewhere, but I am really concerned that Plex traffic is going outside and back in. I installed Plex at the end of August, and since then my internet usage has doubled. My September usage is double what it is normally, and so far, my October usage is in line with previous full months.
Yes, its possible my kid is doing more online, but before I go down that road, is there an easy way to determine if my Plex install is going outside my LAN. I did check my logs, and I can see my local address range (10.2.1.xxx).
I just find it odd that the only thing to change was the Plex install, and then all of a sudden my usage doubles.
Any help for this “network challenged” Plex user would be greatly appreciated
Without having any sense of scale to it, that doesn’t mean much. It might be the usage generated after your PMS installation and it went out to get all the metadata. Again, without scale (MB / GB) of utilization, there is nothing that can be said yet. it might also be coupled with them reporting August usage in the September billing cycle.
To make certain your PMS is not visible from outside,
@“ken.beaudry” = I would definitely install something so you can verify your ISP is being honest with their data accounting.
What client(s) are you using to connect? My first thought would be to disable encryption (set server to none or preferred and set clients to none) if you can and see if that makes a difference. You can verify using wireshark and watch the IPs connecting to the server. Encryption, coupled with DNS rebinding, can cause clients to connect to the public IP instead of private.
Thank you everyone for the quick responses and helpful suggestions. I am going to make this as answered for now, (to get rid of that annoying popup on the bottom LOL). I will update with more information after installing some monitoring tools.
Thank you all for your help and observations, I really appreciate the quick responses.
You’re not the only one seeing strange behaviour. I am currently watching Plex traffic between my home server and my home Raspberry Pi bouncing off my router. (It’s not going outside my house, fortunately, but it is being proxied, possibly by the UPNP service?) I’m unhappy about this; the two devices are on the same Ethernet and same IP network…
with everything established now as the local route, unplug the router / modem from the outside world
To return to normal ‘online’ mode, simply undo the above
Interesting issue, but some questions:
Chuck P: # 4 is just to test correct? All internet use in the home would be disabled, not just Plex correct?
Could subzero add to internet use, though I wouldn’t think that the volume of subtitle text could be much?
The mode Chucks suggests means that Plex can function within a home even Plex were to go out of business correct?
Yes, this is a test. It is also how I run my system when the internet goes out. (I live in a rural area and snowfall can take it out for a few days)
Subzero searching and downloading will add to the load. I have no information on how big those subtitle files might be.
Yes, Once you have done your initial loading of PMS; it’s scanned all your media, obtained all your metadata, and (the critical part) pulled down the codecs it needs, you can run ‘off-line’ and fully independent. If you never add a piece of media which has a different encoding (audio or video) then you won’t need to download any codecs for it. Codecs are usually small but are dynamic. IF Plex were to disappear tomorrow (not going to happen), but IF, you would be able to keep on running. You would of course lose your Plex Pass extras and remote access but your media will still stream in your home.
In the event you do need to add media which has a different codec, it’s entirely on you to convert it to something you have already used (PMS has downloaded)
Thanks for confirming Plex can operate and serve media independently of Plex’s corporate servers. I certainly hope and expect Plex will be around to meet our needs, but 30 years ago, I wouldn’t have expected the “near death” experience of the US auto makers and others - corporations often have finite lives.
One could establish a separate home network for Plex on a second router, where that router is isolated from the internet, if you wanted to ensure that limited data wasn’t used by Plex, but still have internet available for other applications . Or I suppose just blocking port 32400 would do the same thing with a single router.
You would have to block the outbound traffic from PMS in order to isolate properly. This is not as easily done as blocking port 32400 inbound traffic because each outbound request gets a new port.
@ken.beaudry said:
Thank you very much for responding so quickly.
As for scale:
June - 550GB
July - 624GB
Aug - 602GB <------ Server was installed at the end of Aug
Sept - 1,034GB
Oct (first 1/2) - 601GB Already
32400 is open, but remote access is disabled, and secure connections is also disabled.
Wow! My service is data capped at 300 GB. I can’t imagine being able to use 600 GB of data much less 1034…
I am having the same problem and it has taken me a while to absolutely determine that the culprit is the Plex.
I need a solution to MAKE the Plex send zero data to the internet. There needs to be a way.
@ken.beaudry said:
Thank you very much for responding so quickly.
As for scale:
June - 550GB
July - 624GB
Aug - 602GB <------ Server was installed at the end of Aug
Sept - 1,034GB
Oct (first 1/2) - 601GB Already
32400 is open, but remote access is disabled, and secure connections is also disabled.
Wow! My service is data capped at 300 GB. I can’t imagine being able to use 600 GB of data much less 1034…
I am having the same problem and it has taken me a while to absolutely determine that the culprit is the Plex.
I need a solution to MAKE the Plex send zero data to the internet. There needs to be a way.
Old thread here.
Sign the server out of Plex.tv (settings - Server - General)
Sign your browser out of Plex.tv
You will lose your Plex Pass features by being signed out.
Disable ‘secure connections’.
(Settings - Server - Network)
explicitly disable remote access
(Settings - Server - Remote Access)
When these are still active and your router or your ISP is not cooperating, your media data may end up getting routed over the internet - even when playing only in the local network. (Relay connection)
After making these changes, restart your Plex server first,
and after a few minutes all your Plex clients.
