So to bring home the point that I believe this appears to be a Plex side issue. I fired up my backup plex server that has been offline for a few months. It runs the exact same hardware as my production box. The only difference being Windows 10 pro on it vs Windows 7 Ultimate on the production server. It’s running a pretty old version, 1.4.3.3433. It has no port specified and is working just fine. I can connect directly via my phone on the carrier network.
@sa2000 I can provide logs, however they show my login and email. How can I quickly strip that out before posting without going into each one?
UPDATE - I reverted back to version 1.12.0.4829 on my Prod box and while the Remote Access page is still exhibiting the same behavior…goes green for 5 seconds, then turns red, which used to be the exact opposite when I’d visit the server settings -> Remote access page, I can confirm that going back to this version has cleared the issue up for me.
On my phone, I can directly connect across the carrier network, no more indirect message, and at least one relative that has tried is no longer getting the Direct Connection unavailable. I reverted back approximately 6 hours ago.
I’ve been experiencing the same problems over the last couple of weeks too, I’m certain it’s a issue with Plex as my Emby server is connecting to the outside world with no issues. Looking into it a bit more the Plex server is reporting an incorrect external IP address. Very annoying but I guess that’s what happens when you opt into beta releases. I hope this problem gets acknowledged and resolved before it makes it into a stable release
There are no changes affecting remote access in any of the recent releases. Any issue is coincidental and may be due to different timings or some other factor and this has been demonstrated to be the case many times over the past 6 months
Timing issues do affect the reliability of the remote access availability screen within server settings. A browser refresh or restart would normally correct this - if it is the timing issue for the status indicator
This had nothing to do with what the icon showed in the server settings screen as mine would most of the time be red, but outside connectivity for myself or others continued to work. This was purely an external connection to Plex problem for clients outside the local network, which worked flawlessly for the past 2 years until the previous release.
I have no idea what the root of the issue was since no one from Plex seemed to willing to work through it with me and after spending several hours troubleshooting and scouring the logs and unable to find anything I reverted to a previous release, which worked fine. I was even able to demonstrate it since i have two different Plex servers on two different versions. The current one at the time, did not work outside the LAN, the other on an older version, working just fine.
Saying that the issue was coincidental or due to some other factor is kind of living in denial since no one worked with those affected to find the root cause. Whatever changed in that last release obviously affected a handful of users even if nothing in the remote access portion of the code was touched. Someone mentioned that they found Plex was reporting an incorrect external IP address, but since I had already moved to an older release that was working, I didn’t attempt to confirm those findings.
I can concur that it seems to be a non issue with the new public release of 1.13.0.5023, that I’m using now and jglithero said the latest beta works also. Hopefully this problem is behind those of us that were affected.
@Warmongerx said:
This had nothing to do with what the icon showed in the server settings screen as mine would most of the time be red, but outside connectivity for myself or others continued to work. This was purely an external connection to Plex problem for clients outside the local network, which worked flawlessly for the past 2 years until the previous release.
I have no idea what the root of the issue was since no one from Plex seemed to willing to work through it with me and after spending several hours troubleshooting and scouring the logs and unable to find anything I reverted to a previous release, which worked fine. I was even able to demonstrate it since i have two different Plex servers on two different versions. The current one at the time, did not work outside the LAN, the other on an older version, working just fine.
Saying that the issue was coincidental or due to some other factor is kind of living in denial since no one worked with those affected to find the root cause. Whatever changed in that last release obviously affected a handful of users even if nothing in the remote access portion of the code was touched. Someone mentioned that they found Plex was reporting an incorrect external IP address, but since I had already moved to an older release that was working, I didn’t attempt to confirm those findings.
I can concur that it seems to be a non issue with the new public release of 1.13.0.5023, that I’m using now and jglithero said the latest beta works also. Hopefully this problem is behind those of us that were affected.
Lets have the diagnostics then - screenshots of all router port forwards (covering both servers) - if manually specified port for both. Server logs when having the remote access server setting page showing and covering time when remote access is enabled
DHCP Table screenshots showing DHCP Reservations
Network connections on the server and if windows how windows has classified the connections and also ipconfig /all or equivalent info for other platforms
