I have 2 WAN IP’s attached to my server, I explicitly want it to use WAN2 which is a separate interface.
When I select the interface to use its just for local, the only way I can get Plex to use the correct IP is by changing the route so that the IP I only want Plex to use is the default route and gateway. This is not ideal.
What can I do about this? Is there any config anywhere or maybe I can specify Plex’s routes directly to use for the secondary interface?
Edit: Server is a Ubuntu server
Plex’s interface selector is a “Preferred” interface.
It is not the ‘bound’ interface as you normally think.
Plex has no control ( 
) if the outbound packets.
This is where the problem occurs.
You must configure the machine’s default route / gateway to use the correct adapter – OR – you must have external layer 3 routing which redirects to the appropriate WAN IP/interface
Is there a technical reason for this and why it never has wanted to change? It really is annoying having to jump through the hoops to get certain implementations working (OpenMPTCPRouter) 
Is there a technical reason? To my mind - No.
I wrote example code and gave it to Engineering long ago.
At that time, the engineering team didn’t understand how to control the TCP/IP stack and apply, bind() , a source address to a socket to control which interface the traffic was sent from.
I tried over and over. The argument was “PMS works on your home network. There should be one and only one home network”. (implied, one network interface on the host)
Since COVID, there are a lot more dual-subnet/network home LANs.
The argument definitely has changed. Machines have multiple NICs.
The one-subnet in your home argument for your media server — that actually makes sense. (I have one subnet for work & for home without interference. )
I can configure my PMS to straddle two distinct subnets without any problems.
what is your actual need? What is not working the way you want it to be?
Well the machine that runs Plex I want to listen on a specific interface as that is behind OpenMPTCPRouter which is bonding multiple WANs together to aggregate the bandwidth whilst still using just one IP. So whilst the bandwidth is higher; the routing is sub-optimal for things that don’t need to aggregate upload bandwidth together.
I don’t want the general routing of the machine using this ideally, I want only Plex to make use of the aggregated links.
I do wonder if maybe there is more of a demand for this feature, is there any chance of a discussion internally to see how things have moved on since it was last discussed?
i just read through how this works (pretty standard)
My question to you:
Are you using single-path to the router which then handles the multi-path to the internet ?
-or-
Do you have multiple host adapters connecting to the router which then handles the multipath to the internet ?
( Where’s the delineation ? – At the Computer or at the router ? )
I currently have 3 WANs 1000/100, 500/50, 1800/120. They go into my main router. The house generally speaking just uses the latter.
The OMR sits on a vm in a machine which is connected to the router with a 10G link. Plex machine is connected to my network on a 10G link too. This one interface is shared with untagged (home ip, just one wan) and a vlan tag. The vlan is routed to the OMR.
OMR handles the aggregation, which uses the 3 wan paths to a datacenter with a much higher capacity link.
I’d rather not waste the bandwidth at the other end, it’s expensive.
Any traffic on vlan 100 for example is routed via 3 wan links which end up at the DC using one WAN ip.
What I want is the Plex server to use my unlimited bandwidth; maybe just one WAN. Plex to use the aggregated bandwidth via the DC, not unlimited.
By making Plex server use the VLAN interface as its default route I can quickly waste excessive amounts of bandwidth… I just want Plex ONLY to use that.
Also if Plex would just bind to one interface I could do this a lot easier without having to use OMR, and instead just use mptcp over openvpn to the server.
I’m still experimenting, but thus far it’s pretty perfect outside of having to default routes for literally everything but Plex to use untagged. Very annoying.
I am able to do a Speedtest and get around 2800 down and 250 up which is awesome. I just don’t want it as the default route.
There is a way to do this.
If the WAN IP you want to use is STATIC, or you have a DDNS / FQDN assigned,
Settings - Server - Network - Show Advanced
Scroll down to
Custom server access URLs
A comma-separated list of URLs (http or https) which are published up to plex.tv for server discovery.
This is where you put the https://FQDN:port or https://Static.WAN.IP.addr:port of the desired WAN you want to use
This way, Plex.tv will advertise the WAN IP you want to use first.
You can add multiple ip addresses if you want some kind of balancing.
I had 0 idea this was a thing, so I don’t even need to aggregate, although it might still be smart idea to do in case one WAN is loaded more than the other.
I did see that option but I just assumed it was relating to something else and it would still use the main public IP shown in the connectivity bit. Awesome, I’ll give this a go. Was this added recently or as a workaround to this kind of balancing situation?
It’s been there for a long time.
Most folks don’t see it because of the “Show Advanced” option
Playing around with this, its not ideal. It still tries to use my main public IP first. I have to then disable remote access and hard set the IP + port, and then I cant specify a maximum upload for plex to correctly handle the bandwidth.
Additionally, for some reason I also run into NAT issues with all clients showing the gateway IP of the OpenMPTCPRouter. I will reach out to them to see if its a config issue somewhere, however the first point still stands where by default its publishing the default gateway IP.
Would it be possible to see internally if there is any thoughts on improving this feature given a lot more people will be running into situations where they want to specify to use a specific interface. I would rather have a connection for nothing but Plex traffic? I understand this could not be lower on the priority list but nonetheless would be a very good feature improvement.
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