I have been successfully using Plex having been hooked up to a broadband connection but since have moved in to temporary accommodation and am using my mobile 4G hotspot to access the internet for all my other devices such as Apple TV etc… Netflix, Spotify and so on. However using my plex server (MacBook Pro) to connect to the mobile Hotspot is not allowing me to access a remote connection to plex. Can plex use a mobile Hotspot for its internet connection? All other device seem quite happy with this. regards Chris
That is most likely not possible, since almost all mobile network operators are putting their 4G customers behind CG-NAT.
So your server doesn’t have a publicly accessible IP address and therefore other clients cannot contact it. The only thing which can work under these circumstances is Relay access, but it is bandwidth-restricted and therefore only usable for small screens and music.
Thank you for the information. That kinda makes sense. All my other applications only require “an out” connection to stream content. In this case I need to be able to gain access “In” to my Plex server. You mentioned accessing through a relay. The only set up I could see was setting the security up as Preferred or Required. Do you know if there are any other particular settings? I’m going to give a 4G router a go and link it to a hub later and see it that works as I think that administers a DHCP IP address connected devices. Worth a go ! Appreciate your feedback
There is nothing special you need to do to get Relay working, except don’t disable ‘secure connections’.
Employing a router won’t change your situation, unfortunately.
Only if this router then establishes a kind of “tunnel” to a server which has a public IP address. That could work.
There are some companies which offer such a service. But then all traffic from and to your Plex server will be routed through this service. Some of them have data volume limits, others do throttle the available bandwidth. Pretty much all of them want money for this.
Just to chime in here, using a 4g router might help. Certainly in the UK, Three does issue public IP addresses to any mobile device using its mobile data APN (3Internet, not three.co.uk), which you can actually use from any of their regular phone sim deals. I run my Plex server from a Huawei 4G router and it works just fine.
