RE: 0.7Mbps speed limit remotely, "Not available outside your network" with ports forwarded

Plex Media Server Remote Access
1

I have a problem I hope you can help with. I have updated and reviewed all the trouble shooting links. My remote now stays green, but Plex is on relay. I have tied everything so far, reserved ip, port forwarding, firewall settings, etc. I have trouble even logging in on my Shield sometimes that is on ethernet (it says not connected to network), but my family can log in on wifi across town at the same time. My Plex app on my Vizio tv on wifi can access most of the time, but the Shield on ethernet won’t.

3

Anything fancy about your home network?
e.g. different subnets or WIFI APs establishing their own sub-network with its own range of local IPs?

4

No, just my Cox modem/router. I had a tp-link extender, but unplugged it to see if that was a problem.

5

So… let’s talk about that home network of yours.
There’s the Cox modem/router…

  • server and shield have a wired connection to that device?
  • what exactly have you tried / done with regards to reserved IP, firewall settings… (as remote access is working, don’t bother about the port forwarding)
  • does the Shield give you problems with other apps as well or is this specific to Plex?
    …
6

  1. Shield is wired, server is wireless. No room for laptop to be wired near modem/router.

  2. Whitelisted all Plex apps, port 32400, checked canyouseeme and it is open. Reserved 192.168.0.50 for laptop server on router, UPNP disabled.

  3. No problems with any other apps.

7

no need for that… your local connection doesn’t need Plex to be accessible from outside your home network – unless it’s so messed up it’ll route local traffic through a Plex relay (which isn’t the case for you from what I could understand so far).

As for the Shield… does your cox modem maybe have a dedicated ethernet port that is linked to a guest network (preventing the shield from seeing stuff that’s on your home network / WIFI)? or vice versa… might the notebook be running in a Guest WIFI of your cox modem, therefore preventing the Shield from seeing it locally?

1 Like
8

No, I don’t have a guest network set up, and the modem doesn’t have a dedicated port for that. Like I said before, I can get on sometimes, usually after a couple of attempts after it saying there is no connection to the serrver. The server is green though.

9

My laptop shows as a connected device on my router with a reserved ip working fine. And my local traffic IS going through the relay for Plex.

10

If local traffic goes through a relay… you have a substantial hiccup in your local network.

Question… because you specifically mentioned the laptop with the PMS is showing up as a connected device on your router. Does your Shield show up there as well?

11

Yes it shows up. All Plex goes through relay, local and remote.

12

Do you have any active firewalls on the devices in your home network?
Plex needs to be able to communicate not only over port tcp/32400.

13

I went back and made rules for all those ports, restarted everything, and still the same.

14

how about disabling the firewall to verify it if that’s what’s blocking the Plex clients from finding the server (or not).

15

Just did that, made no difference.

16

Funny, but the app on the tv transcodes faster and better on wifi than the app on the wired shield. both limited to 2mbps, but the tv transcodes at a higher bitrate.

17

Check your router’s Wi-Fi settings to see if it has a setting for wireless or Wi-Fi isolation. If available, and enabled, it will allow wireless devices to connect to the Internet, but they won’t be visible to other devices on your network. If enabled on your router, it would easily explain why you’re seeing the behavior you do.

And what manufacturer/model router do you have?

18

An Arris TG1682G. No, to my knowledge there is no setting for isolation.

19

There’s not much in the way of a manual out there for that router, unfortunately. I did see a reference to a couple of things out there though:

  1. One guide recommends setting Security Mode to Disabled in the event of Wi-Fi connectivity issues. It does not say where this setting lives on in the interface though.

  2. Another suggestion I saw was to create a guest network, even if you don’t intend to use it. I think the idea here was that if one doesn’t exist, the primary wireless network defaults to using client isolation; if a guest Wi-Fi network exists, client isolation is disabled on the non-guest network.

Both of these suggestions are somewhat anecdotal, but I don’t think either would hurt check.

But, if you can, it would probably be best to find some way of connecting your PMS host to your wired network to avoid the problem altogether.

20

Unfortunately the wife won’t go for me putting the laptop next to the router(would mess up her decorations :slightly_frowning_face:).

I disabled the security mode a long time ago, the setting is on the router page.

I will try the guest option, can’t hurt :man_shrugging: