PMP and Plexamp on same machine show as Remote and Indirect

[GoodDogs]

Hi all,

latest PMS running on FreeBSD.

I just noticed Plexamp when playing music (on my MBP) showing up as Indirect. But PMP on the same macOS machine playing simultaneously as Plexamp shows up as Remote.

Is this to be expected?

Thanks,
Scott

[OttoKerner]

This is more an issue with the server and your router/firewall/DNS resolver than with the clients.
No FreeBSD user here, so I can’t tell you details, but you want to make sure that:

• if the server is running “containerized”, it should be using the ‘host’ network, to make it directly accessible from your home network
• don’t use domain names to access Plex server in your local network. It is just not worth the hassle and you’ll have to have valid security certificates for these domain names
• the DNS resolver of your home network needs to be able to resolve domain names on the .direct TLD reliably and has to update the records swiftly. If you are relying on your ISP’s DNS server for this, try using Google’s instead (8.8.8.8 and/or 8.8.4.4)
  (Because ISP DNS servers are sometimes not good at this.)
• if your DNS resolver has ‘DNS rebinding protection’, define an exception from that for the domain plex.direct

[GoodDogs]

I’m not so sure that it’s server-side as both clients (Plexamp and PMP) are on the same machine talking to the same server. The client machine is on different subnet to the server which I assume is why the some clients appear as Remote (I’ve no idea how PMS distinguishes Local from Remote).

Neither client has been explicitly supplied with server details so they must derive it from the Plex online server (via the web login). The server does supply “Custom server access URLs” which work fine with my certificate. And I get the nice green tick on the server’s Remote menu item. I would have tried specifying the server manually in Plexamp but there is very little configurable in that app.

In any case, I read elsewhere that relaying requires HTTPS, and so I disabled it to see what would happen (adjusting my custom URLs accordingly). Sure enough, Plexamp switched to Remote. So obviously connectivity to the server directly exists (in fact tcpdump shows a flurry of connections on the server each time I skip tracks). I’m wondering if Plexamp has an issue with HTTPS connections.

After a bit more testing it does indeed appear to be an issue with Plexamp and HTTPS connections. Debugging in the macOS console doesn’t help much. I’ll create a post in the forum tomorrow.

The reason I think it’s an issue with Plexamp is that I have tested two scenarios:

• PMS with Secure connections Required
• PMS with Secure connections Disabled

In both scenarios I have used three clients:

• macOS running Plexamp (on a different subnet to the PMS, but no NAT)
• macOS (same) running PMP
• iOS running Prism (on 4G coming in via custom NAT port)

Images below, but the summary is:
With secure connections Required: PMS and Prism connect as Secure, Remote; Plexamp connects as Indirect (implied secure?)
With secure connections Disabled: All three connect as Insecure, Remote

Plexamp is the odd-client-out here.

[OttoKerner]

I see. Sorry, I somehow assumed that the server itself is also running on the same machine as these clients.
This might indeed be an issue specific to plexamp. There is work being done on a revamped version of it. The Plexamp version that is currently publicly available is kinda outdated.