How often does Plex Server phone home with IP?

Plex Media Server Remote Access
1

I’ve recently upgraded my ISP (faster), but their reliability has been… questionable lately. At least once or twice a day, the internet can cut out for upwards of 15 minutes at a time. As we are still testing it out, we maintained our old ISP, who hasn’t lost connection for months. So we are looking into getting a Dual-Wan router, which can fail-over the house internet from the faster ISP to the slower.

However, the change in IP means that Plex will have given out an incorrect IP address. In case the faster ISP is out for hours at a time (or fails to come back at all), I need to ensure that my server reports its new external IP address quickly, to make sure remote access works.

My question here is what does it take for my Plex server to phone up to the authentication servers with the new IP address? I have DDNS that updates every minute with my household’s external IP, so I hope to enter my domain into the Plex server under “list of IP’s to report”, but I want to know how often the actual IP is reported.

2

An easier method is:

  1. Add the DDNS name to your Settings - Server - Network - Custom Server Access URL value.

  2. When you do this, and after the apps restart, they will use the DDNS FQDN you’ve specified instead of the Plex.tv IP address

After things settle down, you can revert to the default method if you wish

3

I do plan to do that, but still wish to know how often the server does phone home. If my IP changes, how long should I expect to see the old incorrect IP being sent by Plex to clients without any manual intervention? (aka, I want to just let it go, not reboot the server every time my IP changes).

4

sorry, PMS updates about 1x per hour. To confirm for your specific server,
search the DEBUG logs (Plex Media Server.x.log) for reachabiity or authentication statements.

This is Plex.tv confirming your IP and your server reaching out.

It will update the IP (what we call “Last seen”) if/when there is any authentication activity.
– Server authenticates with Plex.tv (plex.tv captures that IP during the auth process)
– Authentication request – for whomever is playing – continues uninterrupted.

5

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