Let me start by saying I’ve seen several threads, both here and elsewhere, that discuss what I’m seeing, but I’d like to better understand one of the mentioned potential fixes: A VPS relay over SSH.
Ultimately, I have my Plex server hosted on a connection with upstream > 500Mbps, which has been consistently tested and verified. However, I frequently receive complaints from my family that they have trouble streaming and have to continually lower the quality, often below 1Mbps to stay connected. I previously had the same server setup (lifted and shifted all hardware) on a 40Mbps upload via cable modem and did not have complaints. Local streaming, with as many as 6 concurrent connections works fine, including transcodes, so I don’t believe server hardware is related to the issue.
What I have come to understand is that my 500Mbps upstream is ultimately best at getting me to the web, but not necessarily best at getting me directly to other residential ISPs. And so, a VPS at a respected host seems to be a viable solution because it means my local ISP would be uploading to them at a fast speed and my streamers would be downloading from them at a fast speed. It makes perfect sense – I presume the added latency isn’t an issue because once the stream begins, that’s behind us.
So, in order to set something like this up, I’m guessing I need:
- VPS at a respected hosting company or in Azure/AWS (I have several servers hosted across multiple companies, so this should not be a problem – Azure/AWS may charge for bandwidth usage, so I may avoid those, though)
- An SSH tunnel in place that connects the VPS → Plex Server
- A reverse proxy so that my server can still figure out the “true” source IP of the connection, rather than just recognizing everything as 127.0.0.1 traffic
Some mention of this here:
I have a breadth of knowledge in a lot of related areas of computing (software engineer and linux/windows admin in a previous life), but nothing specific enough to this. So I’m hoping you guys can help me get started and in turn provide help to others experiencing similar issues.
