Indirect connection, wont play media from a shared server

General Discussions
1

I’ve been sharing my server with friends and family for a few years now without a problem. For some reason recently my parents have been unable to connect with my server.
I have deleted off the app on their ipad, sent a new invite, reinstalled everything including the Chromecast dongle. So now I have the Plex sever installed on their wired PC and the app on their ipad. On the PC I can now finally see my sever, but it says ‘Indirect Connection’. I can see all my media files but none of them will play.
I have done a search for Indirect connection in the help section but nothing comes up. I have no problem with the one 6 people who share my library so I know the problem is not at my PC end, it must be this end, maybe with access through the Sky router?
Any help with this gratefully received as nothing I have tried seems to work.

2

An Indirect connection means your parent’s devices are not able to make a direct connection to your server so they are going through Plex’s Relay server. Typically, that means remote access is not set up properly.

https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/216766168-Accessing-a-Server-through-Relay

Not sure why they don’t play. You’ll need to provide the server and client logs.

3

I just wanted to say that I’m having the same issue. Sometime in the past week, my server can only be connected indirectly. Nothing changed on my home (server) network end. I even tried forwarding the port, and it still says that the server can’t be seen from the Internet.

Resetting the Remote connection does not help. Restarting the server does not help. Sometimes the server is not even available indirectly.

I suspect the issue is that Plex changed something on their end.

4

Well that article doesn’t help at all, I’m trying to connect from a wired PC, not an app on a device. So I’m basically stuck now and have no idea why this is happening as like the other guy has said nothing has been changed except Plex updates.

5

Happy to provide logs if someone can tell me how.

6

@5entinel - Does PMS report that Remote Access is working properly?

@Byetheway25 - It doesn’t matter if you are trying from a wired or wireless connection. Direct/Indirect only indicates how the device is connecting to the server. If you on in the same location as the server and can’t get a direct connection, that usually points to either the devices being on separate subnets or DNS rebinding issues.

For both of you, if you can restart PMS, do nothing for 3 minutes, then upload the log here, I can take a look. https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200250417-Plex-Media-Server-Log-Files

7

Hey so it just started working again while I was collecting log files for you. I think the problem is that the server or PMS is/was mixing up its connections while sending tokens. You can kind of see how we’re getting an off-by-one error and receiving the previous token when we make a new request.

1694 Oct 25, 2016 22:53:43.287 [0x7f407f3ff700] DEBUG - HTTP requesting POST https://plex.tv/servers.xml?auth_token=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&async=1&asyncIdentifier=93cf9365-4324-449a-906b-a27c87cbc64e
…
1742 Oct 25, 2016 22:53:54.783 [0x7f4094fff700] DEBUG - HTTP requesting POST https://plex.tv/servers.xml?auth_token=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&async=1&asyncIdentifier=cb92962b-f6d7-4dde-abe1-158358d590a7
1743 Oct 25, 2016 22:53:55.312 [0x7f4094fff700] DEBUG - HTTP 201 response from POST https://plex.tv/servers.xml?auth_token=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&async=1&asyncIdentifier=cb92962b-f6d7-4dde-abe1-158358d590a7
…
1748 Oct 25, 2016 22:53:55.315 [0x7f4082bff700] DEBUG - HTTP requesting PUT https://plex.tv/api/servers/8bd892f64929a57409798701ea54816719eb0962/connectivity?X-Plex-Token=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&asyncIdentifier=01dfa5e5-a06c-432a-8fa8-4db3320ab675
…
1771 Oct 25, 2016 22:53:55.762 [0x7f4082bff700] DEBUG - HTTP 200 response from PUT https://plex.tv/api/servers/8bd892f64929a57409798701ea54816719eb0962/connectivity?X-Plex-Token=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&asyncIdentifier=01dfa5e5-a06c-432a-8fa8-4db3320ab675
1772 Oct 25, 2016 22:53:55.762 [0x7f4093fff700] WARN - PubSub: Received notifyConnectivity event with incorrect async identifier (93cf9365-4324-449a-906b-a27c87cbc64e, expected 01dfa5e5-a06c-432a-8fa8-4db3320ab675)
1773 Oct 25, 2016 22:53:55.762 [0x7f408afff700] DEBUG - MyPlex: Requesting reachability check.
1774 Oct 25, 2016 22:53:55.762 [0x7f4093fff700] DEBUG - EventSource: Failure in IdleTimeout (0 - Success).
1775 Oct 25, 2016 22:53:55.762 [0x7f4093fff700] DEBUG - MyPlex: We appear to have lost Internet connectivity, resetting device URL cache.
1776 Oct 25, 2016 22:53:55.762 [0x7f4093fff700] ERROR - EventSource: Retrying in 15 seconds.
1777 Oct 25, 2016 22:53:55.763 [0x7f4093fff700] DEBUG - Completed: [::ffff:192.168.1.5:55272] 200 PUT /myplex/refreshReachability (5 live) TLS GZIP 11964ms 231 bytes (pipelined: 2)
1778 Oct 25, 2016 22:53:55.763 [0x7f408afff700] DEBUG - HTTP requesting PUT https://plex.tv/api/servers/8bd892f64929a57409798701ea54816719eb0962/connectivity?X-Plex-Token=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&asyncIdentifier=b7669deb-4c48-44e3-88ac-92ab4a455332
…
1805 Oct 25, 2016 22:54:11.226 [0x7f4093fff700] WARN - PubSub: Received notifyConnectivity event with incorrect async identifier (01dfa5e5-a06c-432a-8fa8-4db3320ab675, expected b7669deb-4c48-44e3-88ac-92ab4a455332)