I’ve been using Plex for ages with NordVPN, but I recently switched to a new ISP and ran into some issues with Remote Access. After trying lots of things, I ended up here: I had to completely uninstall NordVPN to get Remote Access to work.
For additional info, I was using NordVPN’s split tunneling to use it exclusively for my torrent client. Even with the VPN disabled, I was still unable to get Remote Access working properly. It would show the “Fully accessible outside your network” message but would say the private and public IPs were unknown, and I couldn’t actually connect to it remotely.
Given that it’s pretty impractical to install and uninstall my VPN depending on what I’m doing, does anyone know a way I could fix this?
I’m having a similar issue where, if the VPN is on, I can only access my server through Plex’s relay servers…
I use a VPN on the machine where I run my plex server and, if NordVPN is running (even with split tunneling, so that only my torrent clients connect through the VPN), the port fowarding I have set from the outside world does NOT work.
Here’s what my setup looks like:
[internet ip:42301] ↔ [load balancing router for two internet connections in case one fails] ↔ [42301:google wifi router:3201] ↔ [my plex server:3200]
If my VPN is off, I telnet from the outside on port 42301, the server responds back just fine.
If my VPN is on, the port forwarding just hangs…
Anyway, what I think is happening is that, even with split tunneling, the operating system is NOT just routing the connections from the apps you associate with the split tunneling but, instead, responding to any outside packets that get to the machine through the VPN…
In Linux, I know it is possible to apply some iptables nat post rules to overcome this but, in Windows, I don’t know enough about how to fix this…
Depending on how technical you are, I would recommend running wireshark to confirm my hypothesis (about how external connections still get replied through the VPN route instead of the non VPN internet access route) and figure out how to tell Windows to STOP doing that…
Without it, even if you are doing port forwarding to open up your plex server to the outside world, outside connections that come from your regular internet TRY to leave the internet through the VPN and they fail!
With that toggled on, the connection goes through just fine At least, that’s what resolved my issue and that’s my theory on what was happening!
At least, that’s what resolved my issue and that’s my theory on what was happening!