Server Version#: Synology → 1.18.2.2058
Player Version#: AppleTV BETA → 2,12
All devices on on a local network with IP range 192.168.1.0/24.
If playing on Chrome, MacOs Plex app, iPhone IOS plex app or iPad IOS plex app plex is able to detect they are on LAN and successfully plays via local IP.
However when playing the exact same content on AppleTV, it defaults to a WAN connection and (i) depending on content transcodes to lower resolution (ii) is much much slower even on menus, etc…
I’ve tried playing with the following settings & now change:
→ Enable server support for IPv6 → off.
→ Preferred network interface → forced to eth1 (the local LAN).
→ Enable local network discovery (GDM) → ON
→ LAN Networks → 192.168.1.0/24
→ List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth → 192.168.1.1/24
Some notes:
The LAN IPv4 is a flat 192.168.1.0/24 (192.168.1.1-192.168.1.254). No VLANs or subnets.
AppleTV & Synology are hardwired.
No IPv6
See below image of the problem. The other 2 IOS are iphone & ipad, all playing the same content.
The whole LAN is configured to use Cloudflare’s DNS at 1.1.1.1 (one suggested at and from what I’ve checked around the internet, my router doesn’t have DNS rebinding protection.
@darcilicious. Thank you!
Yes, tried everything on the AppleTV -> signing out & back in, restarting. deleting app.
Originally was on “official” version, but tried also with the Beta app.
It looks as though the Apple TV is having trouble connecting to your server (a timeout) and is falling back to using a relayed connection. From the ATV logs (truncated and slightly sanitized):
2019/12/09 11:45:02.179 (73 MB) (3102) ❌ PMKConnectionTestOperation.m:74 | Failed testing connection <PMKPlexServerConnection: 0x281537cf0>[ https://192-168-1-10..plex.direct:32400 - 192.168.1.10:32400 (plex,published,direct) ] to standard server TheMediaBox (hasPresence) - with error Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1001 "The request timed out."
And here’s the successful, relayed connection test:
2019/12/09 11:45:02.208 (73 MB) (3192) 🔧 PMKConnectionManager.m:684 | Checking connections to standard server TheMediaBox (hasPresence) - : (
"<PMKPlexServerConnection: 0x2815d8c80>[ https://172-104-245-120..plex.direct:8443 - 172-104-245-120..plex.direct:8443 (plex,published,relayed) ]"
)
...
2019/12/09 11:45:02.693 (73 MB) (3140) 🔧 PMKConnectionTestOperation.m:84 | Finished testing connection <PMKPlexServerConnection: 0x2815d8c80>[ https://172-104-245-120..plex.direct:8443 - 172-104-245-120..plex.direct:8443 (plex,published,relayed) ] to standard server TheMediaBox (hasPresence) -
It’s not clear from the logs why the timeout is occurring. It could still be a DNS issue, being unable to resolve the *.plex.direct URL. But it may also simply be a network issue preventing your Apple TV from connecting to PMS.
Very baffled! Tried checking resources.xml and the local IP of the AppleTV is correctly attributed as:
-> local=“1”
-> owned=“1”
-> same public address as the other players which are able to do local - publicAddress=“XXX”
-> publicAddressMatches=“1”
Below the server, the IOS iPad app and the AppleTV (left out client identifier, token and public IP):
@pshanew Thanks, super useful. Makes sense as there is a delay with the spinning circle when I boot the app for the 1st time on the AppleTV. Must be this timeout.
Given all other clients can do the DNS and on AppleTV tried 1.1.1.1 then google 8.8.8.8 and OpenDNS w/plex on the allow list, want to start investigating other networks issues. What could it be? they are both wired to an apple airport extreme.
It looks like your Apple TV is at 192.168.1.15. Is that correct? If so, can you try putting it somewhere in the 192.168.1.90’s like the other two clients? You can do this either by manually setting the network info on the Apple TV itself, or by creating a DHCP reservation for it on your router. Doing it via a reservation would probably be preferred so that the DHCP server doesn’t go behind you and give that IP address to another device later.
@pshanew Thanks so much for helping me debug! It’s fixed and basically the issue was… me.
I had opened ports in the Synology firewall assuming the AppleTV was on a higher IP range.
Your post just jogged my memory on this. No need for DNS server changes or anything more complex.
