Remote access: Direct connections not possible. [PMS on Windows 10]

Plex Media Server Remote Access
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Hey guys!

My name is Joe and this is my first post on the forums, I’m happy to be here!

Here’s the reason I’m writing this: I’m having some troubles getting a direct connection to my Plex server from external devices after switching hardware. Before switching, everything was fine but I needed some more transcoding power and overall stability which is why I went from an Nvidia Shield TV gen1 to a Windows 10 PC (24/7 uptime, i5 8400/8GB@2666; it’s more than enough for my needs now, super happy with the hardware itself).

I think I’ve tried pretty much every possibility I could come up with or find online to get direct connections to work, but no luck. I’m not an expert on networking but I’m not a total noob either, so I basically know what I’m doing and where to find everything. Maybe you guys can come up with something I haven’t thought of yet or just did wrong, any help is appreciated!

  • I’m behind a DS lite connection with both a public IPv4 and aa public IPv6 address. Nonetheless, I’ve created a portmapper to get me a v4 redirect to my v6 address, just to be sure.
  • UDP Port 32400 is open (Fritzbox 6591, also UPnP enabled) and server sharing as well as IPv6 support is enabled within Plex.
  • I’ve added every possible external adress (every portmapper URL with ports, all possible IP variants of 1-2-3.abc.plex.direct:32400/web for both public IPS as well as NSlookup URLS from the portmapper URLs) to my additional URLs. The issue here is that none of my addresses is accesible through HTTPS, only HTTP via an internet browser. Maybe the issue is hidden here somewhere?
  • The Server PC is IMHO configured correctly with a fixed local IP address, fixed alternative DNS servers, IPv4 and IPv6 enabled and additional internal firewall rules to open ports for PMS, just in case.
  • Router has DNS rebind exeptions for plex.direct, all portmapper URLs, plex.tv (just in case), and *.abc.plex.direct (again, just to make sure).

Still, no external device can connect directly, only relay connections (limited to 2 Mbps through Plex Pass) are possible. What am I missing here? I’m pretty sure I’ve covered everything there is, my only guess is that the server PC itself is misconfigured in some way, router and Plex settings should be fine.

Again, any help is highly appreciated, thanks a lot!

Server Version#: 1.25.3.5385

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Hi Joe, welcome to the Forum!
Let’s start with some simple checks.

Can you disable UPnP (unless you need it for some other service) and setup a manual port forward on your Fritzbox for Plex. You don’t need to use 32400 as the public port… just make sure to use a TCP port (not UDP) and to configure that port as the public port in the Plex remote access settings.

After you did this… can you see/access the router’s public IPv4 address on the given TCP port from outside your home network (e.g. using a service like canyouseeme.org)?

IIRC you’ll also need to configure a custom certificate matching your custom access domain if you want to use a different domain to access your PMS.

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Hey Tom,

thanks so much for you quick reply and the nice words!

I’m a bit embarassed by my typo. Of course it’s the TCP port I have enabled (in addition to the UPnP) not the UDP port. Sorry!

Also the website you suggested did not work for my ipv4 address which is why played around with the .plex.direct address in the additional URLs field which I had done what feels like 120 times before in the past two weeks (yeah, I’ve been trying hard to get this to work!) when I noticed that I had simply added the wrong ipv6 address in the .plex.direct URL which is even more embarassing than the typo in my original post. So, yeah, after all I did do everything correctly, except for the most important thing.

Well, with that out of the way and direct connections back up working, I’d like to thank you so much for - kind of - pointing me in the right direction, making me check everything for the 120th time and exposing myself as quite a fool online, as per usual :sweat_smile:

Again, thank you for your time and pardon me wasting it. Maybe it’ll help someone else in the future and make them double check their settings.

All the best :heart:
Joe

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