Unable to connect to my friend's Plex server

I’ve been trying to connect to my friend’s Plex server. He serves a few other people with no problems. We go through the invite process and got that setup but whenever I try to connect to his server I see his server and the number of shares but the connect fails with “Unavailable”. It says “The selected server cannot be reached securely. An insecure connection may be possible” yet insecure connection also fails. This is on my Macbook Pro. On my Android phone it says “Direct connection unavailable” and it cannot connect. If I switch the Wifi off on my phone and use cellular data it connects with no issue. So it seems the problem is in my Router setting somewhere. I have UpNP on. What else needs to be set.

My router is a Ubee from Time Warner Cable.

More info. I figured out that I can connect to the remote server if I disable the router’s firewall. If I turn it back on and attempt to add a port forward for 32400 for UDP/TCP to my Plex Server running on my MacBook however it still fails to connect. It’s only if I have my Firewall turned off that it work (or set to low which essentially lets all ports in).

@adefaria said:
More info. I figured out that I can connect to the remote server if I disable the router’s firewall. If I turn it back on and attempt to add a port forward for 32400 for UDP/TCP to my Plex Server running on my MacBook however it still fails to connect. It’s only if I have my Firewall turned off that it work (or set to low which essentially lets all ports in).

Sounds like a port issue or a firewall issue happening somewhere, if you can connect to his server with the firewall off. Also are you sure your friend is using port 32400 for his server?

Yes I agree - sounds like a port or firewall issue. Yes my friend is using 32400 for his server. I’ve added a port forward for 192.168.0.6 which is my MacBook which I run a Plex Server on for the local media there. I have it set for TCP and UDP and inbound and outbound ports are all 32400. Still doesn’t work.

Do you run a software firewall on your macbook as well?

No but you got me thinking. I run Sophos Home. The only reason I do is that it allows me to use a VPN to connect to my current $client. They require I run some sort of antivirus. I don’t normally do this so I don’t know a lot about this Sophos piece of crap. From what I can see there’s no simple way to simply toggle it off temporarily. Some say do this or that but doesn’t appear on my system. IOW they say “Go to Preferences” but there is no Preferences in the Sophos Home that I have installed. So if you can point me to how I can learn to simply toggle this off to see if it’s the problem I’d appreciate it.

I do see a link that’s named “Exceptions…” but that presents me with a screen that has “ANTIVIRUS”, “WEBSITES” and “APPLICATIONS”. None of them show anything nor allow any changes. There’s a statement at the bottom of that screen that says “All exceptions are set centrally in the Sophos Home Dashboard”. Sophos Home Dashboard is a link that leads to the web and that doesn’t seem to have any way to configure anything! It’s really crappy but my current $client requires that I have it.

Any advise would be appreciated.

I really don’t anything about Sophos, sorry, you might want to check their website help section.

Honestly i would guess though its your routers firewall giving the issue. Since when you disable the router firewall you can connect to it. Have you tried adding your IP to to the firewall DMZ and see if it passes through? Becareful as the DMZ passes all ports for that ip

Yeah which is why I wouldn’t want to do that. I don’t understand how the port forwarding I configured did not work.

Have you tried restarting your router?

Yes. Same problem.

Does anybody know why opening the port on my router failed to work?

Bump? Anybody?