Plex LAN Performance

Plex Media Server
1

Hi all,

I have been running Plex on MacOS for a few years and really enjoy it, but I am concerned about something related to streaming performance in my LAN. I had been under the impression that streaming to a client on the same LAN as the server would just use the internal network and not be subject to bandwidth issues on the Internet (WAN) connection. We find that the Internet speed drops significantly for a couple of hours in the early evening (dinner time-ish), and even though I can ping the Mac running Plex with extremely low latency (~5ms is typical), all streaming basically stops, as if my client (Roku) is always using the external WAN connection. Is there a configuration setting on the server that will force local clients to only use the local connection or have I muffed something in the client settings, or it’s not a problem for anyone but me?

Thoughts?
Ron

2

While playing something, go look at the Activity / Dashboard on the server.

Does it say Local next to the client’s IP address?

image

And under Video and Audio, does it say Direct … or does it say … Transcode?

1 Like
3

Thanks. I hadn’t thought to look at this. It does say ‘Local’, which I’m guessing means it is using the local LAN connection. I will have to investigate further to figure out why WAN bandwidth issues might be affecting streaming on the LAN.

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