Remote access troubles

General Discussions
1

This is an ongoing issue, and quite frankly, it’s starting to tick me off.

When I got Plex, I was having no problems, my server was connected to my router via wifi. Then, I got around to installing CAT-6 throughout my house, and connected the server directly using CAT-6. I was getting better response, and higher quality both locally and remotely (computer is a cheap Acer workstation computer that I paid $200 for at Best Buy and upgraded the hard drive. Intel Pentium quad-core @ 1.6 GHz, 4 GB RAM)

Then, I added a switch between the router and the wall (that went through directly to the router). Started to have a problem, very long responses, at times would time-out, and Plex would report that remote access was unavailable. Local was just fine.

Also, at this time, an update had installed for Plex server, as well as a Windows update (yuck!)

Well, after fidgeting with router settings, and playing with Windows settings, I broke local connection, then fixed it. I had now removed the switch, making the server direct connect to the router again, and reverted other settings.

I still have no remote access, though now I’m getting response before time-out occurs.

I am not running a firewall on the server, and have set the server outside the network via DMZ hosting on the router.

I’m also short of uninstalling Plex and reinstalling it, but an update had just been installed.

2

explain your network set up. what router are you using? what modem if a modem/router combo? do you know how to port forward?

3

Modem/router combo is provided by my ISP - CenturyLink. ZyXEL C1100Z

From the modem, I’ve got a CAT-6 cable connected to the wall, and through the wall is paired with CAT-6, and on the other side of the wall is CAT-6 cable going directly to the server. Had no problems before the switch was added, then I removed the switch, and the issue remained. The switch was a Netgear Gigabit 5-port switch.

In the modem/router settings, I’ve got DMZ hosting enabled for the server, and port forwarding doesn’t resolve the issue. I’ve tried that, even tried changing the port in Plex and setting the forward to the corresponding port, to no avail. I’ve tried disabling UPnP and NAT, to no success no matter what I disabled or both. Firewall is disabled on the router as well.

I’m somehow thinking that maybe my ISP is being a bugger about this, however using the port check (saw the link on another thread), and the port is open, and service can be seen.

Plex version is 1.5.7.4016. Should have stated that earlier.

4

No ideas?

I feel as though this thread is dead now.

5

Hello Straycat, question - are you absolutely positively sure that the netgear you have used was a dumb switch and not something with DHCP?
I was sorting out something very similar lately - two routers/AP’s set up as switches, third one as a gateway with DHCP, when one of the switches suddenly went full ■■■■■■ after power outage, switched back to router mode with DHCP enabled, and hilarity ensued - two DHCP servers on one network trying to assign IP’s with different connection parameters to devices resulted in random connection losses for all the devices, took me almost 2 hours to find out what happened.
Another important thing is - how does the server got IP assigned? Does it have ip set up manually, or do you have DHCP reservation, or nothing so the ip of the server changes from time to time?
At this time, do you have port forward set to the server, and is the correct port forwarded, or do you rely on uPNP - this can be unreliable on some routers…
I would like to ask you to try the following - check the DHCP ip range on router and then go to the server and set up the IP (out of the range of DHCP and it should not be IP already used - default IP of router should be 192.168.0.1, if DHCP range is 2-254, modify accordingly), netmask, gateway and DNS servers manually in the settings of your server - I do not know how proficient you are, gateway is IP of your router, DNS should be in the router WAN settings, mask is usually 255.255.255.0 unless you have specific network settings or very large network. Alternatively, you can set DHCP reservation for the server if you know how, but then you have to make sure that server got new IP before proceeding further (Windows machine - run cmd, type ipconfig - release, wait to finish, then type ipconfig -renew)
Then go to your Plex server settings, Remote access, click Show advanced, tick manually specify public port and put there 32400, apply and save.
Now go to your router settings, port forwarding, and set up a port forwarding: Port 32400 (both internal and external if available), TCP protocol, forward to IP of your server you set up before.
Post result.

6

@straycatstrat said:
Modem/router combo is provided by my ISP - CenturyLink. ZyXEL C1100Z
In the modem/router settings,… and port forwarding doesn’t resolve the issue. I’ve tried that, even tried changing the port in Plex and setting the forward to the corresponding port, to no avail.

that sounds backwards but maybe i am reading what you are saying wrong. You cannot pick a random port to be forwarded to. The internal port must be 32400. The Manualy specify port in the remote access settings is to note what the external port is so Plex.tv has that to tell to clients.

so port forward should look like this

name=Plex
External port = whatever you want. generally pick some high number ( not in use between 0 and 65535 ) or 32400 to make easy to remember
Internal port = 32400
Protocol=TCP
computer = Local IP of computer server is installed on

then in remote access settigns in server, in Manually Specify port field enter the port you used for External, check the box to enable it and then click the enabled remote access button.

Some routers do not let you have UPnP on when using manual port forwarding
I would not use DMZ
If you router/modem has IP reservation for devices, set one for your server computer so it’s local IP address never changes

7

Your thread is 4 days old and by no means dead.

What your trying to do is relatively simple you just need to take it step by step.

  1. Ensure you have a public IP on the WAN side of your router. For instance my ISP doesn’t give me one so it will remote access will never work the conventional way I have to go through a VPN.
  2. Make sure there is only one device handling NAT on your network. In your case your ISP router.
  3. Make sure your Plex server has a fixed IP address outside of the DHCP range on your router.
  4. Forward and external port (as stated 32400 to keep it simple) to the port which Plex is using 32400 to the fixed IP address you assigned to your Plex server.

As stated you do not want DMZ
NAT should be enabled and your Plex Server should have a local fixed IP address
I would turn off UPnP

Also there’s no point getting ticked off with Plex if you are having networking issues. Plex is a Media steaming service which they do very well. The fact that they provide troubleshooting for remote access is a plus and you can come unto the forums and ask.

This thread is very helpful
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200931138-Troubleshooting-Remote-Access

8

@corwin_x said:
Hello Straycat, question - are you absolutely positively sure that the netgear you have used was a dumb switch and not something with DHCP?

I’m pretty sure that the switch doesn’t issue DHCP, but I’m not 100% sure to be honest. I do know that the IP addresses issued to any devices I have connected to the swtiches are seen by the router, with proper ethernet port number, and the IP addresses match with the rest of the devices. This is the device. NETGEAR 5 Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch (GS605NA) - Walmart.com

@corwin_x said:
Another important thing is - how does the server got IP assigned? Does it have ip set up manually, or do you have DHCP reservation, or nothing so the ip of the server changes from time to time?

The server gets it’s IP address by DHCP, and it hasn’t changed since I switched it from Wi-fi connection to hardwire. I’ll set up a static IP for it, and try that.

@corwin_x said:
At this time, do you have port forward set to the server, and is the correct port forwarded, or do you rely on uPNP - this can be unreliable on some routers…

I had port forward, but I think I actually set it up wrong. As stated before, I think I had it set up correctly, but it didn’t work…

@corwin_x said:
I would like to ask you to try the following - check the DHCP ip range on router and then go to the server and set up the IP (out of the range of DHCP and it should not be IP already used - default IP of router should be 192.168.0.1, if DHCP range is 2-254, modify accordingly), netmask, gateway and DNS servers manually in the settings of your server - I do not know how proficient you are, gateway is IP of your router, DNS should be in the router WAN settings, mask is usually 255.255.255.0 unless you have specific network settings or very large network. Alternatively, you can set DHCP reservation for the server if you know how, but then you have to make sure that server got new IP before proceeding further (Windows machine - run cmd, type ipconfig - release, wait to finish, then type ipconfig -renew)
Then go to your Plex server settings, Remote access, click Show advanced, tick manually specify public port and put there 32400, apply and save.
Now go to your router settings, port forwarding, and set up a port forwarding: Port 32400 (both internal and external if available), TCP protocol, forward to IP of your server you set up before.
Post result.

Will try. Thanks.

@BigWheel said:

@straycatstrat said:
Modem/router combo is provided by my ISP - CenturyLink. ZyXEL C1100Z
In the modem/router settings,… and port forwarding doesn’t resolve the issue. I’ve tried that, even tried changing the port in Plex and setting the forward to the corresponding port, to no avail.

that sounds backwards but maybe i am reading what you are saying wrong. You cannot pick a random port to be forwarded to. The internal port must be 32400. The Manualy specify port in the remote access settings is to note what the external port is so Plex.tv has that to tell to clients.

Possible I didn’t set it up correctly.

@BigWheel said:
Some routers do not let you have UPnP on when using manual port forwarding

Might have been my issue.

@BigWheel said:
I would not use DMZ
If you router/modem has IP reservation for devices, set one for your server computer so it’s local IP address never changes

I only learned about DMZ because it was something that I’ve only seen on this router. However, as stated before, it was the only way to get it to work. I’ll remove DMZ, and set up either static IP or IP reservation, and see if that works.

@umiq88 said:
As stated you do not want DMZ
NAT should be enabled and your Plex Server should have a local fixed IP address
I would turn off UPnP

I’ll attempt this.

@umiq88 said:
Also there’s no point getting ticked off with Plex if you are having networking issues. Plex is a Media steaming service which they do very well. The fact that they provide troubleshooting for remote access is a plus and you can come unto the forums and ask.

I stated wrong, I was just getting ticked off over the issue, not so much Plex. Mostly because I really wasn’t understanding what is going wrong, or why.

@umiq88 said:
This thread is very helpful
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200931138-Troubleshooting-Remote-Access

I’ve looked into this a million times, and even tried everything stated there, and nothing worked. That’s why I turned to the forums.

I appreciate the responses guys, I’ll try what what suggested, and I’ll come back with what worked. I won’t try it all at once though, that may turn up useless lol

Main thing I’ve gathered is to turn off DMZ and uPnP, and set up IP reservation.

9

Okay, an update after playing with it for a few hours.

I decided to do a factory reset on my modem, since about a month ago a storm knocked out my Internet, and a brief power outage, and the modem made my wifi wonky. After resetting wifi back to default, the issue was fixed. So, I figured that my issue was lying modem level, and reset to factory settings, in hopes to fix it. While on the phone with CenturyLink tech support (needed my PPPoE username and password since it was never given to me), he had a look around to see maybe the service was being blocked either my level or their level, and he assured me it’s not blocked and went ahead and reset it to factory for me.

New slate. It worked…not.

With just factory settings, it’ll briefly say “You are connected!” and then say it’s unavailable outside the network. I’m not sure it’s just the default display until an error comes up, or what, because it’ll be good for a couple minutes sometimes, and others a few seconds, and at times very brief, as you’ll see in the video.

Something else that intrigues me, is Private IP:32400 <- External x.x.x.x:0. External IP has port 0. Sometimes it’ll display a port like 20201, or 20241, or, I’ve even seen 57583, all saying outside network is unavailable.

I discovered that the modem/router has IP reservation by default, and disabling uPnP does no good. I’m still unsure about setting up port forward if I’m doing it right, if you would like a screenshot of the setup page and how I have it set up, I’m willing to provide. Having DMZ enabled seems to have the longest delay before it displaying it’s unavailable. It’s disabled now.

I went into the network properties on my server, and I noticed it said DNS 192.168.0.1, so I went and set it up with the IP that was given, and manually put in the DNS pulled from my modem.

And video:

10

Go to http://canyouseeme.org/ and check that the manual portforward you’ve done works. Also, double-check that the IP it determines as your external IP is the same as Plex thinks (the one you covered up in that video). If the IP is not the same, you are double-NAT’ed and have to call your ISP to fix that (ask for a real IP), if the port forward does not work you will have to re-do it in the router.

Also, the static IP setting on your server does not have to use the DNS provided by your ISP (which it does if you point it to your router). Try using Googles DNS which is 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Public_DNS

11

@Peter_W said:
Go to http://canyouseeme.org/ and check that the manual portforward you’ve done works. Also, double-check that the IP it determines as your external IP is the same as Plex thinks (the one you covered up in that video). If the IP is not the same, you are double-NAT’ed and have to call your ISP to fix that (ask for a real IP), if the port forward does not work you will have to re-do it in the router.

I am not double-NAT’ed, I didn’t realize that an ISP could do that. I set up the port forward to how I think it should have been, and CanYouSeeMe can’t find that port. I even removed the port forward, and same thing with default port. I know it’s been said before I don’t want that DMZ, but me being slightly stubborn, I tried it anyway, and CYSM can see the default port, and even when I set up a random port forward, setting Plex accordingly. However, even with DMZ, Plex says that it cannot be available outside my network.

I keep trying DMZ, because as stated earlier, that was the only way to get it to work, only now it’s not. I’m thinking my router is being a butt-nugget, and need to get a better router. I don’t really care for how bulky this one is anyway.

@Peter_W said:

Also, the static IP setting on your server does not have to use the DNS provided by your ISP (which it does if you point it to your router). Try using Googles DNS which is 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 - Google Public DNS - Wikipedia

I forgot about Google DNS, and I changed the DNS on the server to those. I used to use them all the time.

12

I’d suggest that if you can, you get that modem/router put into bridge mode (as to act as only as a modem) and then buy a proper router that works correctly. Will save you alot of headache. And generally speaking, there are no issues using switches between PMS and the router, so perhaps a new router will fix that as well.

13

So, earlier today I went and bought a new router. Hooked it up, and fiddled with it for about an hour or so (having trouble getting it connected to the Internet), and we have success!!