I have NordVPN which I run 24/7 on all my PCs. I have one of these PCs running Plex Media Server. I can access all my Plex media on that PC, but I cannot stream to our Roku and FireSticks that are on the same network unless I disable NordVPN on the Media Server PC. Is there a way of doing this?
I would like to use Remote Access as well, but for now I’d be happy with just being able to stream to my TVs without stopping my VPN.
Thank you.
Hello @zunebuggy (I miss my Zune 
) I too am using Nord, but after a bunch of trial and error I decided to run my VPN on my router. I’m using a Asus RT-AC88U with third party firmware (Asuswrt-Merlin) and NordVPN connected with OpenVPN session and using the tunneling system that the Merlin firmware has built in. I had to move my PMS from my desktop to another computer then make that new pc tunnel around the VPN so it shows as not on the VPN. I was still having mixed signals that my PMS was available outside my network (sometimes it was showing ok sometimes not) so I looked into it and had to add it also to the DHCP Server settings. now it’s always showing as “Fully accessible outside your network”. I found that all the Roku’s in the house needed to be tunneled also (do to aggravation from apps like HULU and geo-location) but now I don’t have any issues. Depending on your router, you may think about trying it that way.
This is consistently problematic, and at this point I’m not aware of any VPN clients that have a 100% effective mechanism for excluding Plex.
Sometimes it can be made to work reasonably well, at least for local network access.
Within your VPN client, do you have options related to “split tunneling”, “local network access”, or the ability to exclude all apps within the Plex Media Server directory?
It is ideal to run Plex on a system that is not using VPN. Sometimes it makes sense to move the apps you want to VPN inside a Docker image, or to run Plex in a Docker (but that has potential hardware transcoding impact).
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