Option to manually specify the announced IP address for the server?

Plex Media Server Remote Access
1

Server Version#: 1.24.5.5173
Player Version#: N/A
My situation requires some lengthy explanation.

In Short, My network environment disallows me to connect to plex.tv directly(duck censorship btw), My Plex server talks to plex.tv via a proxy. Plex.tv detects the server’s IP address on their side, which renders Plex Remote direct connection unusable as it is seeing my proxy server’s IP as my server’s ip address.

Unfortunately, setting port-forwarding is not possible on the proxy server I am using.

So, is there a way for me to manually specify my plex server’s ip address?

Thanks guys, great software by the way.

2 Likes
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Have you already looked into Settings > [Server Name] > Network > Custom server access URLs? IIRC you don’t need a fully qualified URL but can also use an IP address.

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Let’s rephrase that to
You don’t need a domain name. An IP is sufficient.

However, if you set “secure connections” to “forced”, your custom IP will not be used.
Because there is no cryptographic certificate for an IP – therefore an encrypted connection cannot be established.
If you want secure connections, you need a domain name and a fitting certificate for this domain. You need to configure Plex to actually use this certificate.

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The Custom server access URL field doesn’t accept a bare IP address typed directly into the field.

It does accept this format: http://198.51.100.51:[port].

If an address is entered with that format, Plex will also automatically register the URI https://198-51-100-51.[guid].plex.direct:[port], which will automatically enable SSL using a Plex-provided certificate … no custom domain name or additional certificate required.

When using a Custom server access URL, it may be appropriate to disable Remote Access. If this is not disabled, the server will continue to discover and (also) register the incorrect IP address.

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If you are supplying a remote access URL/IP and also have access via LAN then you must supply both separated with a comma. Put the LAN IP first. Plex will still work with secured connection set to required if only an IP is given.

https://LANIP:PORT,https://REMOTEIP:PORT

This is how I have mine setup with nginx reverse proxy.

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Plex always listens on the machine’s natural LAN address. That will automatically be registered as the first entry, and doesn’t need to be manually entered.

If additional entries are needed, I don’t think the order of the Custom server access URLs matters or is preserved.

I’m pretty sure that this is the order:

  1. Local LAN IP : 32400
  2. All Custom server access URLs entries, ordered randomly
  3. Detected Public Internet address, if Remote Access is enabled
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I remember not being able to connect local until I registered it manually. I dunno.

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From inside the LAN do you access Plex directly or via the nginx listener?

Published addresses are visible at this URL:

https://plex.tv/api/resources?includeHttps=1&X-Plex-Token=TOKEN

The LAN IP is always first, and the detected Remote Access public IP address is last – as far as I can tell.

If I add multiple Custom server access URLs, rearrange them, remove them all, add them back … they may be published in a different order.

Something odd is that the server’s IP address, and the detected public IP address, are silently ignored if they’re entered in Custom server access URLs.

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I’m using Docker would be the reason why I had to specify it and also I had to put the LAN IP first. Just remembered. Otherwise it try’s to listen to the docker bridge which isn’t accessible outside the host.

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My problem is the damn “detected” address. Why can’t I use the IP address of what’s essentially a proxy, like the thing that Cloudflare does? I can access it fine with my “public” IP. But it’s really not the PUBLIC public IP since there is a provider NAT. I have a proxy that bypasses that NAT. If I try to use that address (it’s similar to Cloudflare), I just get “connection refused”.

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You can. See @Volts earlier post:

The ‘guid’ is your certificate UUID, as found in your Plex Media Server preferences file (or the Windows registry). This post describes how to find it:

Once you’ve got that, you can compose the custom server access URL as described above:

https://desired_ip_address.[CertificateUUID].plex.direct:[port]

This will be published as a server access URL which your clients can then access (using secure connections).

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It’s even easier than that!

You really only need Custom server access URLs = http://ip.ad.dr.es:port.

Plex extracts the IP address from that and automatically generates and registers the full magical https://ip-ad-dr-es.UUID.plex.direct:port thing with the Plex Cloud.

I don’t know if this has changed, or if we were all just making it too hard before, or what.

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Sorry for reviving this kind-of-old thread. This has solved my problem, but a certificate CAN be issued to an IP address, it
's just not that widely used as the majority of home ISP issues dynamic IP addresses. Plus, invalidating certificates every time your IP changes is not practical.

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