This started a couple of days ago where my remote access would drop and then I would have to cycle the “Retry” button over and over until it worked but now that’s not working. I think at one point last night it was showing "not available’ even while someone was streaming?
- use a manually created port forwarding in your router Troubleshooting Remote Access | Plex Support
- don’t tell your router to close down the connection to the ISP, ever (some devices have a setting which forces a connection shutdown after a fixed interval – disable that)
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I’ve only used that option with WAY earlier versions of Plex and haven’t needed to do that for a long time.
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My router was rebooted the other day for necessary reasons of troubleshooting, but it came back up just fine and everything on all other devices in my home work - except Plex.
As you can see from the screenshot, Plex configured that port itself and it matches what’s in the Remote Access page. (see attachments)
See anything else? I mean, I hope you’re not telling me that once my router reboots, Plex no longer works …ever. Haha
Routers nowadays often drop automatically established portforwardings after a few hours. This behaviour is often introduced by firmware updates, either performed by the user, or automatically by the router or the ISP.
Ok, so I stopped Plex. I deleted that entry in my router and refreshed it. It’s gone.
I restarted Plex and the entry came back in my router and now Plex is showing this.
What are you trying to demonstrate?
And with that - my friend just connected and is streaming.
Sooo… any ideas what’s causing this?
Thanks
I was trying to troubleshoot the issue and tell you my steps and what happened. What do you mean…what am I trying to demonstrate?!?
I’m trying to get Plex to work correctly and it’s not.
As I said above
Routers nowadays often drop automatically established portforwardings after a few hours. This behaviour is often introduced by firmware updates, either performed by the user, or automatically by the router or the ISP.
Now that you restarted Plex server, it has initiated a new automatic port forwarding in your router. So it will work for a while.
Try the manual port forwarding, as I recommended.
I will. And thanks for your suggestion. But may I ask one question (or two)?
Why is it happening now?
It’s been working great for years until a couple of days ago and even though it’s streaming now, Plex is confused about the IP addresses in the Remote Access page.
I cannot tell you. If your router could talk, it may be the best source of information about this.
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This is happening to me as well.
Hardware Synology DS1019 and Plex.
Plex pass subscription.
Several TVs running Plex apps and my iPad. As well. EveryOne gets disconnected or can’t connect. Everything has been fine almost a year until 2 weeks ago. I think a update broke it.
I can be remotely watching something on the NAS and it drops the connection. When I login directly to the NAS it’s fine but the app won’t run. I have to reboot the NAS to establish a session. Them at some point it happens again.
Yes, like 2 weeks ago. It might not have broke everyone’s Plex, but it sure affected some of us. And like you, I don’t go switching around my settings once I have them set from months ago so, I didn’t change anything on my end. (except for the new UI stuffs, but that doesn’t affect the network…but, I have noticed it slows ■■■■ down sometimes and fails to load my Continue Watching row when I first fire it up in the mornings.)
I’ve never heard of routers just randomly dropping auto port-forwards. What’s the point of that, especially if the connection is alive? My auto-port-forwarding has worked for me for years. It has to be the last update, somehow.
(Just a quick update)
Ever since I started this topic, Plex is showing that Remote Access is down. I reconnect it, it drops again almost immediately…yet people were streaming from me last night. My computer rebooted today (thanks Windows Update) so I don’t know why this is happening.
I remember something like this in the OLD versions of Plex where the Remote Access would show down until someone actually connected, and then it would be fine. I just had a friend try to connect and they did successfully, even though it shows RA is disconnected.
EDIT: I realized they were all going through Plex Relay at the time after seeing it in Tautulli.
Update: This is still happening. My server will NOT hold a Remote Connection properly. My family is able to stream but it’s all through Plex Relay. Yesterday, it even showed ME, on the same machine as the server, in Indirect mode until I restarted Plex a few times. Somehow, for a short period of time, it said it was connected on both my localhost and app.plex.tv browsers tabs but the IP addresses all said “Unknown IP” under Remote Access.
I have manually forwarded my port as requested above and that didn’t fix the issue, unfortunately. It will connect for a few seconds and then drop. So, the exact same thing happens when I let it map the port for me. I can see it pop up in my router when it adds it and this has worked for YEARS with the same router.
When I go to CanYouSeeMe.org it can see my qBitorrent ports and a couple of others I have in my router, but it doesn’t see 32400.
Win 10 Home
Plex Version 1.22.3.4523
Plex Pass Sub
No new software has been installed since this started, nothing new on my network.
I put myself as the DMZ Host in my router (wide open, sir) and it still happens.
Here is a snippet of my server logs where I turned on Verbose logging and tried to reconnect the Remote Access to no avail. Can someone please take a look and let me know what’s happening?
(I masked an email address or two and changed my IP to Z.Z.Z.Z in the log)
Thanks,
Z
Plex Media Server.log (383.3 KB)
EDIT: Interestingly enough, someone was able to connect directly while someone else was already going through Plex Relay at the same time. A third person tried and it went straight to Relay for them. #confused
My server is acting really weird, guys.
My wife was having a network issue on her work PC at one point a couple of weeks ago so I bounced the router as I had done before and it fixed her issue. There was also a Windows Update that happened overnight and the next morning, Remote Access wouldn’t stay connected any longer than about 10 seconds, no matter what I tried. I could see the port being auto-mapped in my router as I started the server, just as it’s done for the past few years. I even tried manually assigning a port as recommended from the Plex Ninja who replied above, but the same thing was happening. So, at this point, I kind of ruled out my router. No changes or firmware updates have happened to it for a very long time, other than the bounce mentioned above. (The last time I bounced it was about a year ago, no issues at that time.)
So, you know how Windows can be, I thought maybe it changed something in Windows Defender Firewall so I went to check. Everything looked fine, even saw the Plex entries in the Incoming Connections under Advanced settings. There were none under Outgoing Connections - don’t even know if there should have been. But, just on a whim, I created a new Outgoing Connection rule to allow the port that the router was mapping to let traffic through. That seemed to clear up the Remote Access always red issue and everything was now showing Green all the time. I thought I fixed it. I did not.
If the server tries to Optimize Database or scans my library for too long, the server “craps out” on my end. When I mean “craps out”, I mean…it gets to a point when I’ll click around in Settings (slowly) and all of a sudden, all I see is the spinning wheel and then it tells me the Server Settings are not available at this time. I can return to the cached Home page but nothing will play and I’ll have to close the browser. Tautulli will show anyone streaming drop immediately but it only says nothing is playing, still no errors. (i have it watching the localhost IP) Task Manager still shows Plex Media Server, Plex Tuner Service, Plex Update Service and sometimes Plex Transcoder or Plex Relay will be running if streams were active at the time.
After I restart, people are able to connect. I even see them in Tautulli. If I don’t click around, it seems fine. But if the server decides to Optimize or if I add new media and it starts to update the metadata, or if I click around in Settings again…it can crash it.
At times, the server seems fine on my side in Settings, but no one is able to connect to it - they’re all seeing the exclamation points on their side. I can click around in Settings (a little bit) and everything stays green, I can see the Console constantly, and I mean constantly, updating library and photo metadata. I can see people in there trying to connect but they aren’t able to until I restart it. Then, eventually, it will crap out on me and I wind up restarting it again anyway.
I have a couple of log files that should show something, right? If someone could take a look, I’d really appreciate it.
I’d rather upload the new ones to someone and then delete them, due to lots of sensitive info being in them.
Plex Pass Sub
Win 10 Home
Plex Version 1.22.3.4523
No new software has been installed since this started, nothing new on my network.
No internet connection issues - everything else runs fine all the time. (including qBit, Sonarr, Radarr, all browsers, etc.)
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