How do I set up remote access?

General Discussions
1

I have a Centurylink c1100z router/modem and a netgear r7000 wireless router. My library is on my computer in a separate storage only hard drive. I have been trying for several months to set up the remote access and have never had any luck. Can someone help??

2

have you looked into how to do port forwarding on your router? that is most crucial step and in my experience the most commonly missed or misunderstood step.

port forwarding would be setup in your centurylink, so you would need to figure out its ip and access the configuration webpage. USUALLY its something like http://192.168.1.1 or http://192.168.0.1 (looks like 0.1 is the default for your router)

here is a basic walk through for your router from centurylinks website, hopefully it will be similar to your actual interface.

things to know (i’m sure there is more, but i’m on the road and this is off the top of my head):

  • you will need to know the internal ip address (ie 192.168.0.???) of your plex server
  • the internal port number that you will forward to is ALWAYS 32400 for plex, even if you set a custom port! the external port will be either 32400 OR if you set a custom port, it will be that custom port number. “starting port” and “ending port” will have the same number.
  • unless your plex server is physically or God forbid wirelessly connected to your netgear, you don’t need to do ANYTHING on it. it’s the centurylink that matters. again, UNLESS your plex server is hardwired to your netgear (which i don’t recommend at all), if your plex server IS hardwired to your netgear (has a network cable plugged from your server to the netgear) then you will also need to setup port forwarding thru the netgear.
  • looks like for your centurylink the default username is admin and the password is on a label on the side of the router

Additional info:
Enabling Remote Access
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200484543-Enabling-Remote-Access-for-a-Server

What ports to allow:
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201543147

Remote Access:
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200289506

Troubleshooting remote access
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200931138

hope that helps.

3

Thank You jeramie@40idghelp.us. I believe it has finally been resolved.

Maybe you can follow my path and see if you think it was done correctly this time.

I had tried to follow the steps you outlined in the past on many different occasions only to watch it hold for a few seconds then give me the dreaded “Not Accessible” error message again. After letting my frustration subside, I cleared the port forwarding I had set up previously. I logged into my Plex account, pulled up the “Settings” menu, went to “Server”, Clicked on “Remote Access”, and found my “Private IP” address and port. I then went to my router and set up the port forward to that IP address and entered the 32400 port. After saving that in the router, I went back into the Plex app. I happened to right click the Plex Logo next to the IP information and got a Reload option. I clicked on reload and then everything went to fully accessible. It has held now for more than 30 minutes. Long story short, everything seems to be working now. I’m not sure if I needed to “Reload” the server to the right IP address, but that was the only thing different I tried.

I appreciate your help, and hopefully it will stay up. if it doesn’t I will be back to see if there is something else to try.

4

thats mildly weird, but i could see it needing to take a minute and a reload would give it that time as well as force plex to retry. as long as its working!! =] have fun!!