Plex doesn't work during internet outage

Plex Media Server
1

the only reason I use Plex is for local content. I have Cox for internet and they can have several outages or “unplanned maintenance” a month, where all internet is down at the time when we will watch a movie.
so I will start watching something on an online service and then internet goes down.
so I switch over to Plex, and because of Plex’s reliance on internet login, Plex Server cannot be accessed either. I have tried every suggestion on the forums and other sites but they don’t work.
Plex needs to have the option to work locally without internet like it used to be!
Please fix this issue!
This keeps me from going Premium.

2

Plex never worked without internet. It always required a connection.
(even i’ve grimaced about that a few times).

That said, there are ways to get around the internet outage
(I live in an area where weather takes the internet out quite often)

What I’ve done,

  1. Have a UPS which will power the server and home LAN (a good idea anyway for NAS boxes)

  2. Figure out the LAN address and netmask of your home LAN.
    These are usually,
    – 192.168.0.x/255.255.255.0
    – 192.168.1.x/255.255.255.0
    – 10.x.x.x/255.0.0.0 (or some smaller slice of that)

  3. Settings - Server - Network - Show Advanced.
    – Enter your LAN address and netmask,
    – e.g. 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0 (this covers all of 192.168.0.x)

  4. Set Secure Connections to PREFERRED (at the top)

  5. Make certain the server itself has been assigned a static IP address

  6. SAVE those changes

  7. Set the players to “Allow insecure connections - ON SAME NETWORK”

  8. Now go to each player (client) and setup a manual connection (use the IP address)

  9. Save those changes

Now you can test.

  1. PMS running
  2. Player device open
  3. Unplug the internet
  4. Select your server-by-ip address
  5. You can continue to browse the server
  6. Play for the final test.

Some devices will only be valid until they are restarted (AppleTV is like that)
so be careful. I’ve not done it in a while but PMS might (unknown to me) need auth after reboot for Plex Pass… I know they worked on caching that.

3

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