Yesterday I noticed that I could not establish a direct connection to my server and was limited to the 2 Mbps stream.
Upon investigating the issue, I noticed that the remote connection has stopped working, stating that the server cannot be reached from the internet.
Disabling the remote access and re-enabling it will make it turn green, but it will turn red after a while.
I have tried:
Restarting the server
Restarting my router
Disabling Windows firewall
Disabling router firewall and “Ai protection”
Changing the public port 32400 -> 33400
Turning off UPnP (for some reason this will make the status turn from green to red much faster)
Fiddling with port forwarding in my router (turning it off/on, changing the ports)
I have verified that my public IP has not changed (ISP doesn’t provide static ones), server IP is static and unchanged, so that’s not it either.
I’m not currently where my server is, but my VPN is able to connect, and I can remote into my router and server without problems.
Setup:
Router is ASUS RT-AC68U (latest firmware)
Internet comes as fiber to my building (FTTH), from which the ISP’s equipment splits it to the apartments via ethernet cable. Said cable is then connected to the WAN-port of my router.
Server is connected with ethernet to the router.
I have kind of exhausted all my ideas for what could cause this, maybe an update to windows/plex/router?
Any ideas why this has happened and what can I do to fix it?
Check if Windows has classified your network connection as “public”. It must be “private” if you are behind your own router.
Otherwise I’d ask your ISP if they have put you behind a Carrier Grade NAT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-grade_NAT
More and more ISPs do so to save on publicly-accessible IPv4 addresses.
It might be the VPN which causes the trouble in the first place. If it catches the Plex traffic and forces it onto the VPN connection, then the connection test will fail.
It has worked this way in the past without any issues, but I guess I could try disabling it when I have the chance.
Although connecting to the vpn (open vpn) requires the certificate, username and password and the server is able to stream through the plex relay, I don’t think that vpn is the culprit.
I kept trying different ports and first tried ports in 20000-32400 range and nothing worked. Then I decided to just wing it and tried 200 and success!!
So I guess this is an ISP thing then. Gotta go to their forums next. Thanks for the ideas anyway!
The same happened to me. Drove me crazy that Plex external access suddenly stopped working. I tried your suggestion, and I can confirm, the ports from 15000 and above do not reach my router. I moved Plex to listen on port 500 and all working fine.
My provider is Movistar in Spain, in case others face the same issue.
I know there is a ton of consternation on the Plex forums currently regarding Remote Access suddenly breaking and flipping between connected and not connected. I ran into the same issue on my server.
After many many hours troubleshooting and rebuilding: the issue actually stemmed from the Denial of Service protection on my Asus AX-11000 (if you have that model it is a checkbox under the Firewall setting). The second I disabled that specific option, canyouseeme started reporting it could connect and Plex/Emby has had zero connection issues.
Important Note: that setting has been on since I purchased the router around a year ago. Plex only stopped working with remote access within the last 30 days. I have no idea what changed but thought id share the solution that worked for me.
Server OS:
Windows 10 Pro for Workstations
Plex Server Build:
1.21.2.3939
Router:
Asus GT-AX11000
