If I’m only wanting to use it within my home, do I have to enable remote access for Plex to work with Sonos?
I have no desire to access my servers remotely, only within my home, so I don’t want to set up port forwarding or open my server in any way. Seems that these two components should work within the restricted range of my LAN (wireless and ethernet) but it’s generally failing. When I try to ‘cast’ it recognizes the available Sonos zones, but after selecting one of them, and then hitting play on some music in Plex, there’s a notable pause and then Plex says “Playback Error: An error occurred trying to play this item.”
the sonos service is not local. even though your device is. when you give the device a command it sends it to the sonos online service and them the service tells the server what to do. The sonos service needs to be able to access your server remotely to send it the final command. But the music itself is just going from the server to the sonos player locally. Amazon Echo works similarly.
Hi - Interesting…How would the Sonos device know how to reach the Plex Server locally via the LAN if it is sitting on the same network? In other words what does Plex sends back to Sonos to each out to the server, the Public IP, the hostname?
Sonos does not “require” it either. Setting up remote access depends on your particular network. Some routers are just not very good at UPnP, which is just a routers way of automatically mapping and forwarding to a port. Firewalls have options to automatically open ports for allowed apps when they are running. Because some routers and/or firewall software may just be crappy at doing things automatically, one needs to set them up manually.
Often folks, such as myself, prefer setting up port forwarding manually because I like know which port any device or application is using rather than it potentially being randomly changed by UPnP. It is generally more stable.
the online sonos services finds your server like any remote client does It is authorized the same way you authorized your the Plex app on your phone, by signing into it. Plex.tv is acts like a dynamic DNS or phone directory of where your devices are locally or remotely. and tells what ever is authorized where the server or a particular device is. it may be a simple ip or with a specific unique host name depending on if you have secure connections enabled or not.
When you share your server with a friend, your friend does not need to know the IP of your server to plug into the Plex app they are using. Plex.tv knows you authorized the share to their account and it tells the app on phone they are signed into where your server is.
Thanks for your reply. I guess what I am trying to understand is how what you called “Plex Dynamic DNS” works. Does it provide my Plex Server public IP to Sonos, in such case Sonos will try to access such public IP and will therefore stream the music via the Internet and not via the LAN…or is it done in a smarter way that would force Sonos to recognize that the Plex Server is on the LAN.
This is an over simplification but for the purposes of this thread will suffice: when you use your public IP your router directs the traffic to the device on your LAN just as if you’d used your local IP (there’s a little more to it, but the end result is the same). Nothing leaves your network and nothing goes over the internet.
Anyway, I still have a question if I may: why would Plex displays Sonos as being remote if the traffic is actually streamed on the LAN. This is quite confusing and did not give me confidence that it actually was to the point where I’m considering using Relay instead.
