PMS On 10Gb Network

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

After waiting forever on a Ubiquiti 16 XG and settling on a Buffalo 10Gb switch I finally moved my NAS and servers over to 10Gb. From my NVR, to file transfers, to smoother RDP 10Gb seemed to settle just fine in my rack. Until I got a lot of texts saying nobody could reach my Plex server. After sitting on Discord for over an hour with my buddy using his machine to test streams I finally decided to just switch back to the 1Gb port and it magically worked. The weird thing is, locally everything seemed peachy.

I’m finally coming back to try and resolve this issue since I have the time. For reference, when I try to stream with my phone (cell data not wifi) PlexPY shows my phone connecting, but it never actually plays. It sits on a black screen spinning the loading screen. PlexPY shows the buffer go then throttle like it’s supposed to but never plays on the device. This happens to anybody trying to access my Plex server remotely regardless of device (PS4, Xbox, Roku, Shield, phone, whatever).
Items of interest:
Plex remote port forwarded, shows green check
Secure set to preferred (I’ve tried off and on as well)
IPV6 disabled, although I tried with on as well (works fine on 1Gb)
Everything plays fine locally, even though it seems like remote will play it just sits at the black screen spinning.
Using same port on 10Gb switch for both 10Gb and 1Gb NICs. When moving between the two I change the IP port forwards and reboot machine. (Both NICs set to DHCP so different IP for each)
PMS fully updated

Any ideas?

2

sounds like something is stopping PMS from outbounding. Is there anything within your network, like a smoothwall or something that might be set to inbound on PMS port but may not be set for outbound? I would assume it would have to be the gateway device because it sounds like within the LAN is ok.

3

I may have made this post prematurely, as I discovered ALL outbound traffic (or at least most) with these Asus 10Gb cards I’m running appears to be halted. For S&G’s I decided to try a speedtest and noticed I’m getting no upload and a socket error. This happens on both my server and NAS running identical cards (XG-C100C). My main PC is using Aquaintia on an ASRock X299 Fatal1ty i9 with no issues (Speedtest shows 940 up and down). I have duplicated NIC settings for all 3 and both the server and NAS still will not up to anything on the net (or at least Speedtest). Local appears to be fine. I have tried disabling IPV6 for both Asus NIC rigged machines, and neither are running firewalls or A/V while testing. Using a static IP moving from Asus 10Gb to Intel 1Gb on my server (same switch/cable) it runs fine.

So it appears I have an issue with 2 Asus 10Gb cards. If my NAS can’t up to the net I’m ok with that, but if I can’t use this card in my server it defeats the purpose of moving to 10Gb.

Anybody have experience with these XG-C100C’s? Seems this card is the common denominator to my problem.

4

I don’t think this is it at all, but are you running jumbo frames? I feel like that would be an all or nothing, but never know.

I haven’t run anything 10gb before, but how does your edge router handle the 10gb link, or is it forced to 1gb? Do you have any VPN clients that could try to stream? They would be sudo lan…

5

Clear ARP on your router. More than likely its stuck pointing at the mac address of the 1GB Interface.

6

The only thing I can say is,that this card is not meant for Servers.
I thought it too and bought the card on winter sales…
I bought it for my server 2012r2 and tried Asus driver and Aquaintia.
I had millions of lost packets…
And somewhere I read that this card is not made for server OS.
Maybe a driver limitation and you can modifying… don’t know.

7

@“PP Mguire” said:
I may have made this post prematurely

Is NIC teaming possible with your setup? It may not be 10gb but with several nics you could possibly reach 4gb

8

@DustSt0rm said:
I don’t think this is it at all, but are you running jumbo frames? I feel like that would be an all or nothing, but never know.

I haven’t run anything 10gb before, but how does your edge router handle the 10gb link, or is it forced to 1gb? Do you have any VPN clients that could try to stream? They would be sudo lan…

I do not run jumbo frames for obvious reasons (networking people know). Turning it on or off made no difference though.

I’m not running any Edge hardware. My networking setup is:
USG Pro 4 → Buffalo 10Gb → SFP uplink 16 Port POE Unifi → rest of house (which includes a couple 8 port POE switches in the unimportant chain)
I wanted the 16 XG but got tired of waiting after 7 months for stock.

I run a VPN, but it’s seg from main network as it’s for something else.

@“trent.curtis” said:
Clear ARP on your router. More than likely its stuck pointing at the mac address of the 1GB Interface.

This should have been cleared by the network hardware reboot, but the same issues applied even without static IPs.

@Streamerx said:
The only thing I can say is,that this card is not meant for Servers.
I thought it too and bought the card on winter sales…
I bought it for my server 2012r2 and tried Asus driver and Aquaintia.
I had millions of lost packets…
And somewhere I read that this card is not made for server OS.
Maybe a driver limitation and you can modifying… don’t know.

Ah, totally forgot to mention I’m running Windows 10. I actually didn’t move to S2016 because I intended on running the Asus cards. Consumer cards, didn’t expect good server OS support. W10 is fine for Plex anyways.

@lanboyguyton said:

@“PP Mguire” said:
I may have made this post prematurely

Is NIC teaming possible with your setup? It may not be 10gb but with several nics you could possibly reach 4gb

It is, but I’d rather not otherwise the 10Gb investment is a bit pointless. (It wasn’t just for Plex)

So a little more investigation shows I’m not the only one with this issue. One review on Newegg talks about net outage.
So as I mentioned I’m running an X299 Fatal1ty Pro i9, which uses the exact same chipset as these Asus cards. The 10Gb setup is perfect on my main PC but the NAS and Plex server are showing the exact same issues. The NAS will occasionally perform the upload portion of the speedtest but on the Plex server it never did. I’ve used the exact advanced options between the 3 and no dice. Later I’m going to try direct Aquantia drivers and if that doesn’t work I’m getting an Intel NIC. Lesson learned, just listen to your gut.

9

So I actually have some resolve from this for anybody who might want to give these Asus cards a shot. On a whim randomly last night I decided to just try the driver package from my ASRock board and it actually worked. At first they wanted to act like no cable was plugged in but after some playing around it all came up and is working like it should. I also tried the package direct from Aquantia for research and this too works like a charm.