Sleeping/Wake UP problem - PMS on Windows 10

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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Server Version#: 1.25.9.5721

Hello,

I followed the very good guide created by SunnyDays here : https://forums.plex.tv/t/a-guide-to-remotely-waking-sleeping-your-plex-windows-10-server-via-remote-access-wol/219282

Everything works: Windows standby + waking up when a user (internal or external to the network) wishes to access the server.

I configured wake up at the NIC level with “Wake on pattern match” so that Windows wakes up on a request on the Plex port.

The problem I am having is the following:
When the PC goes to sleep, it comes out of sleep very quickly (After a few seconds).

I did many tests to determine the source of the problem, and:

If I temporarily disable (for testing) the port forwarding function of the plex port in the router (i.e. temporarily disable remote access), the PC stays idle as it should.
Of course, I want to keep remote access working, but if I reactivate it in the router, the PC wakes up very quickly.

I think the problem is due to port scans on my Public IP address. Or while “plex.tv” regularly performs queries to determine if my server is Online/Offline.

The external and internal port that I configured being the default port: 32400

Will changing this external port number have any effect ?
Is it possible to limit access to the Plex port only from a list of source Public IP addresses ?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts/advice.

With best regards.

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Both of those and local requests from devices on your Lan

No

Not unless you have a device in front of your Plex server that determines witch packet (Wake up request) are valid.

Unless you have some sort of control of/in your network pattern matching don’t really work in this case…

The Magic packet approach makes more sense imo but again requires some compatible network devices and some know-how

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Hello larssorensen83 and thanks for your answers,

I also configured Wake On LAN via MagicPackets, which also works fine from LAN and WAN.
Indeed it is “cleaner” since we must specify the destination MAC address of the device to wake up.

The problem being that Plex applications (to my knowledge) cannot send magic packets in order to wake up a server. Unless you have maybe a solution ?

I think it would be a great option to be able to configure this at the plex.tv account level, in the server options. To specify the local IP address, the Public IP address, the Mac Address, and to be able to send a magic packet automatically if a user wishes to access the server (internally or externally).

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Plex do not and proberly never will support WOL.
The solution I’m using is a custom firmware router that detects traffic on my public ip on port 32400 and then determines if the traffic should wake my Plex server (whitelist or blacklist approach) and sends a magic packet…

I use DD-WRT firmware but there are other options - even some standard routers have this ability…

The way Plex is changing lately I really don’t think this will ever happend.

EDIT:
And I wanna make this clear. Plex is not made with WOL in mind so… Even is you have a working solution ala then one I have; Any single Plex update (Client or server) can break your setup complete - I have had some timing issues because my Plex server did’nt wake up quick enough resulting in a empty Plex app…

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Hello larssorensen83 and thank you for the answers.

Finally, in my router, I set up a limitation of access to port 32400, only from Public IP addresses of the necessary country.

This has the effect of limiting unwanted exits from sleep by the PC, and waking up the PC when necessary.
On the other hand, the Plex test of the remote access now indicates that it is not functional. This is normal because the Public IP address used by Plex to perform the test is in a blocked country.

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