Server Version#: 1.30.2.6563
Player Version#: 1.64.2.3546-5107ec40
Hello. I’ve been using Plex (I purchased Lifetime Plex Pass a few years ago), and I use Windows Server to host my audio files so that I can listen to my music remotely. It seems as though no matter what I do, remote access pretty consistently fails. Plex will tell me that my server is unreachable, even though (as far as I can tell) all settings are correct and there should be no issue serving music for remote streaming. When I log myself in via Remote Desktop, TeamViewer, etc. I’m able to access my server remotely no problem. A resetting of the service always fixes the problem. I used Server 2019 for quite a while, and after a wipe of the computer in hopes that maybe that would help my Plex performance I am now I am on 2020. I would say as a general rule, it ran best while on 2019, but that’s not backed by any data; it’s just a sense.
I need to do this resetting the service process at least a few times per week now, and it’s very frustrating. because I rely on my music being there while I work. There was a time when it would be months between needing to restart the service, and that was tolerable. This is essentially unusable now.
I am using a Netgear Orbi as the brains of the network. All port settings seem to be set correctly in the router, and I’ve even experimented with different things over the years – and much more frequently over the past few months – to see if I could get better performance. Nothing seems to really be long-lasting or permanent, and the service restarting process requirement persists.
Any thoughts? Is running Windows Server overkill? I would not be averse to using a different operating system if better results are typically experienced elsewhere. I just need a solution at this point, though, as I am really at a loss and unable to continue doing this.
Sounds like your router is deleting the automatically created port forwarding after a while.
The solution is to use a static port forwarding which you create manually in your router.
Then you only tell Plex which port number to communicate to outside clients.
Since this is Windows, do also disable any power saving features of your network adapter. Particularly (but not exclusively) those which allow it to reduce the link speed when idle. These often lead to large delays in network communication.
I’m a happy Windows desktop guy but I do prefer Unix-like OSes for servers.
You can probably get Windows to cooperate … I think @OttoKerner has some good ideas … But if you have any spare hardware, you might try spinning up a Linux server. And since you seem to only need access to audio, it can be pretty slow, too.
If you have never tried out the Unix-like world you might find it to be a lot of fun.
Thanks @OttoKerner. I’ll have a deeper dive into those articles. Perhaps there is something in there that I missed. I have not played with power settings, so that could be an easy place to start. I see in one of the articles that there is a port forwarding tester, so I should certainly try that to see if I can isolate the issue.
Do you have any experience with Linksys? I ask because I wonder if this is a symptom that is specific to Linksys and their configurations. One thing that’s intriguing but not necessarily a confirmed source of the issue is about two years ago we switched from cable internet to fiber. In doing so, our internal IP went from the standard 192.168.x.x stuff that you see on most routers to 10.0.0.x nomenclature in this newer fiber router. I really had virtually no issues when I was under the 192.168.x.x setup, and most of the issues started up after the switch to fiber. It could just be a coincidence. I did of course update everything in my network to support the fiber router’s address nomenclature, but I always thought that was peculiar at the very least. Are there any known problems with addresses using this style of addresses?
Appreciated, @BanzaiInstitute! I think it might be worth my time to give Linux a shot for this. I really have no dog in the fight when it comes to Windows Server; it’s just been what I’ve always used and it’s what I’m most familiar using, as I support a number of corporate intranets and other similar server setups using Windows Server.
My physical machine running Plex is an USFF Lenovo, and it’s got plenty of horsepower to run/stream music files, especially when considering that is its only purpose. It does certainly struggle streaming video files, however – even when running locally through 100% hardwired connections. I don’t use it for that purpose, though. I really think it’s a software/network settings thing somewhere in the ethers. I’ve just got to find it.
Direct play is really light on resources… if you’re seeing video problems it seems like it might be due to transcoding. What CPU is in that Lenovo? You have Plex Pass so if it’s a semi-recent Intel CPU with a GPU, it should be quite capable.
It’s a decent little rig. Not gonna blow the doors off of my “real” design machines (I do freelance multimedia design), but this should be more than adequate for music streaming. I would think (like you) that it should be able to stream video as well. Fortunately, I don’t use it for that purpose very frequently. I have done it on a few occasions when I needed to catch a show that my DVR didn’t record for whatever reason.
Not for nothing: I would like to on occasion stream 4K content to my TVs on the local network. In my cursory tests, this definitely did not go well. Tons of stuttering and just overall unwatchable video/audio. Perhaps it’s a transcoding issue like you have said, but I did not dig too deeply into it because of the remote music streaming issues persisting.
I’m still working on my remote issues: still very flaky. I feel like it’s something to do with the computer’s settings, as restarts of the entire system as well as restarting of the “PlexService” service kicks the remote access back into life pretty consistently…but then for no apparent reason I get the red flag and then sure as night turns to day, remote access fails again.
Yeah this CPU is fit for direct play, and music, but it will struggle with video processing. It might struggle with audio transcoding, not sure. Anyway, 4k transcoding would be tough and tone mapping would be murder.
It has Quick Sync but “everyone says” Quick Sync is basically no good until Gen 6 and Gen 7 would be even better. (As a data point, I used to run an i3-7100 and under Linux, I could do 3x simultaneous 4K HDR → 1080p SDR streams.)
If you can afford to throw some money at the problem, a server with at least a Gen 7 CPU/GPU would make your server MUCH more capable.
For your remote access issue, I would completely ignore the Plex red/green indicator. I believe that it always shows green at first by default, then changes to red if it finds a problem. So if you are seeing a moment of green and then red, you may be getting a false impression of what is happening.
