Plex Constantly Loses Remote Access

I have the latest version of Plex and have setup all the port forward and have checked if the port is reachable from outside the network and it is but Plex is dropping remote access every 1 to 5 minutes. I really need remote access and there has been nothing that I have seen or heard of anywhere that suggests that there is anything being done about this. I have been reluctant to get the pass because I do not want to pay a lot of money and not be able to use it.

running windows 10 64 bit
Plex server version 1.16.5.1554
Comcast is my ISP
used Canyouseeme.org to test port forwarding and it is able to
used https://portchecker.co/check and it is able to see the port is open
no blocks in any of my firewalls.

I have screenshots and logs that I can upload

To those still having connectivity issues where PMS reports “unavailable” to outside users after hours/days of starting up and running correctly - this is a possible fix that worked for me after months of agony. I had the same Plex user account password for all my devices for years, and this token refresh was the solution. Thanks to @sa2000 for working with me months ago to figure this out - as this is something I wouldn’t have tried otherwise:


Getting a New Token

In rare cases, you may find yourself wanting to invalidate an existing token so it no longer works and get a new one. This isn’t something most users will ever need to do.

The easiest way to do so is to go to your Plex account profile, choose to change your password, and check the Sign out connected devices when setting your new password option when entering the new password.

This will invalidate all of your tokens and, as the implies, sign all of your apps (and any Plex Media Servers) out of your account. When you then sign back in, you’ll re-authenticate and get a new token.

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Thanks for the tip, @russrtw! It feels like one of those ones that are so obvious it’s easy to get lost in the bowels of network troubleshooting hell. I’ll give it a spin and hope it will result in less frequent hair pulling. :nerd_face:

For context, about how long have things been running smoothly for you since you flushed the tokens?

@mikeisonthenets - I know, was a bit surprised myself. It’s been rock-solid ever since.

To avoid vendor firewall/router issues I never use UPnP (security risk anyway), only using manual port-forward (port-redirect in this case) to static internal private IP of PMS. My public IP rarely changes which helps, but PMS outbound listening service reports changes to your public IP anyway - unless you have issues with double-NAT.

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This has been driving me mad for a week or two and I’ve finally resolved it thanks to a phone call to my ISP who revealed they were using Carrier Grade NAT or CGN which effectively turned my connection into a double NAT situation. I was able to opt out and when I restarted my USG router I obtained a new IP address and Plex remote access immediately lit up green.

I urge anyone having this issue to contact their ISP before suffering further hours and days of teeth gnashing, hair pulling and swearing as I did.

This explanation from Wiki:

Carrier-grade NAT usually prevents the ISP customers from using port forwarding, because the network address translation (NAT) is usually implemented by mapping ports of the NAT devices in the network to other ports in the external interface. This is done so the router will be able to map the responses to the correct device; in carrier-grade NAT networks, even though the router at the consumer end might be configured for port forwarding, the “master router” of the ISP, which runs the CGN, will block this port forwarding because the actual port would not be the port configured by the consumer

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I’m with Belong and I’ve called them twice asking for this to be removed from my account … lets just say they wasted my time both times. They have no idea what I’m talking about.

Who are you with and what did you say to them?

Belong are budget Telstra with all the quality support that implies.

Best provider by far is Aussie Broadband both for speeds and Aussie based support. At the risk of sounding like a shill if you use my referral code 2405991 we both get $50 towards our bills if you sign up.

I called up support, told them my port forwards weren’t working and they said its because we use CGN but I’ll opt you out of it right now and your server will start working after rebooting the router. My public IP address changed, and the Plex server showed green ticks immediately. Couldn’t be easier.

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Hi mate,

I understand where you’re coming from but I’ve been with Belong for nearly 3 years. I get consistant 55mbps speeds during peek time, which is enough for me. I have unlimited data and have had no issues or support requirements until now and all for $60 per month. That’s a $20 saving per month - $720 saving over 3 years. It just doesn’t make sense to move providers at this stage.

Thanks for that info. I called back and got a smarter tech representative who’se logged a job for a higher tech to look into the issue. Lets see how they go.

All good, hope they can figure it out for you.

Just found out that Belong do not use Carrier Grade NAT as of yet. Which prompted me to do more troubleshooting.

I use Sonarr for TV Shows, Radarr for Movied and SABnzbd to download the files. I turned off each script individually and came to the conclusion that Sonarr is causing Plex Media Server Remote connection to drop constantly. I’ve turned off Sonarr an turned on Radarr and SABnzbd, now have no drop outs.

Has anyone else had this issue?

Hi everyone, I too am having sudden ‘inaccessible’ problems. It has worked flawlessly for over a year on Windows. Now installed on Ubuntu 18.04, network setup is otherwise exactly the same. It worked for a few days, now I cannot enable remote access. It enables for less than a second, then goes to inaccessible.
I have tried every single suggestion offered in this forum (I’ve spent an hour going through the posts!). I have to say, it’s quite disappointing to see so many people having the same issues in a sense, because it does seem like Plex could do something more to fix this in their app code.

In any case, I hope someone can help.

I’ve got logs I can upload if a Team Member would kindly look at them and offer suggestions.

Didn’t see this mentioned when I glanced over the forum, but I recently started experiencing this issue a little over a week ago. Ended up being caused by my firewall blocking some AWS infrastructure hosted in the EU that Plex uses to determine remote connectivity. Recently implemented a Geo-IP ban so this makes sense. Looking up the IPs on IP Reputation tools like AbuseIPDB show that people have been reporting these IPs as malicious, so that could also be causing issues for anyone blocking IPs based on reputation.

This is actually covered in Plex’s Remote Access Troubleshooting page. They provide a link that dynamically updates the IPs currently being used. You can add this list to a whitelist.

List of Plex servers currently being used

Another thread discussing this

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I started this thread about a year and half ago. Nothing has changed. I still have to constantly “retry” my remote access because it cuts itself off. Very disappointing. I was hoping I could have access to my media whenever I’m out of town. After numerous updates to PMS, you would think that the issue would have been addressed. I can only assume this will never get fixed properly.

right there with ya.
ive given up on the remote access feature as it seems PLEX doesnt consider it to be important.

they are continuously rolling out new features which is great.
but they remote access in their eyes has gone the way of the HTPC.

it is a shame really…used to love to watch stuff on phone while in waiting rooms and such-like.

I just want to throw in my two cents in this thread, since it seems to affect a lot of users, but not for uniform or consistent reasons.

I’ve been using Plex for five-plus years, and I’ve only ever had a remote access issue once; I enjoy remote access to my media pretty much 24 hours a day with no issues otherwise. My one-time problem turned out to be an issue with one of my router settings that somehow got altered, probably after a software update. From keeping an eye on this thread over the past year, it looks to me that the reasons for remote access failure trend towards external issues (i.e. not Plex-specific).

I know that me saying, “Well, this isn’t a problem for meee” isn’t really helpful, but I also don’t think it’s fair to place the onus of “fixing” these problems onto the Plex team. Because of the sheer number and variety of external factors when it comes to allowing remote access into everyone’s personal router, it would be impossible for them to address every single one. We’re talking about individual router settings and behavior, internet service providers and their own particulars, back-end services specific to ISPs, router and modem interaction, users’ knowledge base when it comes to opening ports, the multiple platforms on which the server software is running, etc.

Again, I know this is not super helpful for those of you still having issues related to remote access, but I just wanted to balance some of the negative comments in this thread, and to remind everyone that the dev team cannot possibly predict or compensate for every technical issue outside of their control. Some of the best advice and solutions I’ve received over the years have come from the Plex community of users, not the official Plex team — and that’s not a dig on them, it’s just how it works sometimes.

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but it is on the plex team.
this issue started after a particular update for pretty much everyone.
when i rolled back to that update after it first happened …all was good.
so in my eyes the issue was in that update.
i have since gone ahead and kept things up to date as i wanted some of the new functionality.
but the onus of fixing this is on them
somehow the code got broke with that update and they havent found it and with every subsequent update it gets harder.
to be honest as i have said before this is an extremely low priority for them and i doubt it will ever be fixed.
though it doesnt keep me from hoping with each update that they fix things.

dont get me worng…i love plex and think it is great other then this one issue.
but if someone else comes along with a similar product and working remote access i will jump quicker then rats froma sinking ship

I’m currently running Version 1.18.3.2156… on multiple servers and have never had this problem…

I had it for a few days and it resolved itself before I got around to trying to fix it. As nothing happened on my end and it just started, then stopped happening, I assumed it was either something to do with my ISP or Plex’s server…

I’ve just started having this problem over the last 24 hours. Every 5 - 10 minutes remote access turns off for about 2 minutes.

Running Version 1.18.9.2571.

Same for me @clowg. 1.18.9.2571 and previous release. No changes to router (uptime is months) or Plex forever. I have now tried testing disabled IPv6 and GDM. I am also looking at disabling Tautulli for Remote Checking. I am double-nat, but have port forwarding enabled using fixed 32400. Tautulli V2.2.0 which was updated maybe over the last 2-3 weeks.