So seriously guys, what the hell is happening with the random Remote Access disconnects. I have read hundreds of posts over time about trying to solve this problem that has plagued me since starting to use this S/W year ago. Never once has any of the posts provide any useful information beyond the basics of setting up remote access … which is of course what is failing.
I have a server that has been running for years and it randomly disconnects from the outside world and of course never tells me this has happened, I only find out about it by randomly checking the server settings or someone from my family sending me a text saying they can’t access the server. Setting a manual port has NEVER worked but setting a manual port, then switching back to automatic sometimes magically reconnects me … and adds another random port mapping to my router config. Oh, and yes, I do actually know how to use my router port forwarding function and my server is only single nat’d.
Can we please get some information about what the hell is going on with this function … you know, since it is so CORE to the function of the Plex Media Server. You guys are the ones that are controlling who gets to hit our server and you keep dropping the ball - oh, and sorry, just in case anyone thinks I am talking about who creates and authorizes access to our servers … I know that is me but nobody can see our servers without your servers routing the access to our IPs.
Last night my server became unavailable (seemingly randomly) at least 5 or 6 times, this morning it has already disconnected my server from the outside world 3 times. What gives, my config is not changing but access is.
Please give us some hope that you guys are actually doing something about this critical CORE function of the media server … rather than just messing with the UI of the players (omg what a mess) and updating the forum S/W with the horrible S/W that is now installed.
Has it ever worked for any significant length of time with the ports forwarded? I used to have all sorts of connection issues until I forwarded the ports and assigned static IPs in network. Sometimes you have to wait up to an hour before Plex locks the connection down.
I got a new router, and quickly got frustrated when re-establishing the port forwarding didn’t seem to work. I walked away for a while, only to discover that when I’d returned, it had locked down again, and all was right in the world.
Sorry if this doesn’t help. It’s what worked for me.
No, that is exactly what happens. The last two days have probably been the worst sequence of disconnects that I have ever seen but after almost every server patch in the last year connectivity is lost for a couple hours. It also sometimes randomly disconnects. I can never tell unless I’m on the status page because I will have people connected and then family member will call me up and say “hey I can’t get in”. I will check I will see multiple people connected from the outside but the server is no longer accessible to new people even though old connections are working fine.
Each time it renegotiates I get another entry in my router list of mapped ports. Before I left the house this morning I had five new entries from where Plex dropped the port and then it negotiated a new port and created a new forwarding map (eventually).
Man, this sounds like all the headaches I had before I got Port Forwarding to work correctly. I never could get it to reliably work when set to automatic.
I found it worked best when I let the router manage everything. I force the static IP assignment to the server from the router (instead of letting the PC force register a set IP), and set the forwarded port to the static IP. Letting the router handle the entire workload changed my game.
I don’t mean to insult your intelligence by responding with things you’ve probably already tried.
The computer that my Plex Server runs on has a static IP in a range separate from that which are dynamically allocated for the rest of the house. The forwarding works fine when the Plex servers tell clients what the ip and port are; when they don’t people can’t connect. When you see the message that you are not accessible outside your network it could be for any number of reasons … like you have not set up port forwarding correctly or not enabled Remote Access but there are also times (like last night and this morning) when the Plex servers are not forwarding my IP to clients because of something within their system, not mine.
This is my contention anyway; I have gone over as many aspects of my system and I am able and I am fairly computer literate and I cannot find something on my end (in these cases) that is causing the problem. The ports are still forwarded and working (as mentioned above) - family is watching multiple shows, as long as they stay connected to the server it is fine (multiple people) but new family members can’t connect because the Plex servers are not forwarding my IP and port to them … until it does. If I force a new set of connection parameters by setting a manual forward (I use one of the old non-manual rules created by a Plex Server request that worked fine - in other words, I use a rule that already exists in my router port forwarding table and set it is a manual forward in the Plex Server settings), apply it, it fails (every time), then I go back to automatic and it validates (and creates a new rule in my Router forwarding table) and starts working …
This is a per incident solution for this mysterious and random problem but we have no indication of when this happens unless we are looking at the server status page and see it or someone calls and says they have a problem - remember, existing users are still connected so things look fine.
Anyway, hoping someone from Plex actually responds; this problem has been around since I started using Plex but it does not always happen so it is hard to catch.
This is what the relevant portion of my forwarding table looks like as of now, it was cleared except the highlighted entry which is what I was using for my manual forward, four of those entries I created by doing my own reset (as described above), the others occured when I was out.
