Remote Access and Ports

General Discussions
1

I’m new to Plex and purchased a lifetime subscription, and eagerly hoping I get into the BETA for Amazon Drive so I can use my existing Drive account to finally stream all my family’s home movies.

So far I’ve been using Plex through my Retina Pro MacBook, mid-2014, with OS Sierra.

I’m having trouble connecting to my server and setting up remote access. I have the error message “Not available outside your network.” Further, I’ve been having difficulty getting onto normal the Plex website (?) server, with the error message something along the lines of being unable to connect.

Now, going through Plex’s support channels suggested I ensure NAT-PMP or UPnP are enabled - and it is - as well as checking that I’m not in a Double-NAT scenario (I’m not).

I’m not sure what more to do. I love the idea of Plex and what it can do, and I LOVE that I will soon be able to stream my movies and media from Amazon Drive, but if I can’t connect to the server, what’s the point? Am I supposed to manually specify a port? If so, how do I do that? There’s already a port number defaulted in the manual port section, if that matters.

2

The basics about getting your server setup are first and foremost.

If you have two devices (a router and a modem) between you and the internet (switches don’t count), that’s double-NAT (just covering the bases here).

Some modems don’t respond to UPnP. For those, you must sign in and manually create a ‘port forwarding rule’ or a ‘Virtual Server’ (as some call it) where the port on the modem is forwarded to the static IP of your PMS machine. Static IPs are important if you’re going to make a manual rule (obviously).

When you do create a rule, in Settings - Server - Remote Access (after you’ve signed-in with Settings - General), make certain to click the box “manually specify port” and enter the port number you created in your modem. Most of us use 32400 but you’re free to use anything which doesn’t conflict with anything else.

Also, if you have any firewall software in the computer (not familiar with OS X), make sure to allow port 32400 in as well.

3

Ok, thanks! I will have to give that a try and see if the port forwarding helps.

I have the firewall turned off so that shouldn’t be a problem.