Why does everything go to the Internet now?

I have remote access enabled, HOWEVER, everything I do leaves my house and is going to the Internet before it comes back in. My PMS box is in one room of my house. I use a Roku or Xbox to watch stuff in a different room. All of that data goes to the Internet and back. Why? Do I need to disable remote access entirely to prevent this? My Internet sucks and as a result, I buffer a lot, or can’t play home videos recorded in 1080 at all. My home network is 1Gbps, so my Internet connection shouldn’t matter. Is it all or nothing? I have access to my PMS when I travel, or I don’t, because ultimately everything has to go to the Internet first? I fail to understand the logic there. If I have to watch 1080 home videos on my computer no matter what, I guess I don’t need PMS?

Remote access enabled = everything goes through the Internet, disabled = everything happens on my local network?

Newsflash folks, your private media consumption might not be so private after all.

Server Version#: N/A
Player Version#: N/A

What information is showing in the “now playing” tile for that playback on the Plex server dashboard?
Exemplary screenshot from the "now playing" section

Anything specific about your home network setup (e.g. different subnets / VPN / …)?

I just checked using a network sniffer and even though I have remote enabled and can access via outside network, when accessed on the local network the media content is only being sent from the local PMS to the local client – nothing is being routed outside of the local lan.

It can be a simple VPN issue…

No VPN in play, flat /24 network. See below. I’m not sure if this helps. The 1080 content I’ve just tested transcodes on and off the network even though it would only be about 10Mbps for Direct Play. Just doing a basic network test I’m able to copy files between these devices at 80+Mbps. Left is a transcode for an off-network device. Right is an on-network device at present. Before disabling and re-enabling remote access, everything off and on the network showed transcode and I could watch traffic leaving PMS, going to the Internet, then coming back off the Internet to my on-network device. Now that I’ve turned remote access back on, the on-network devices are showing Direct Play for some content but transcodes for 1080. I made this discovery by total coincidence looking at something else and have no idea how long it had been going on.

cap

Also in the dashboard bandwidth view – before flipping remote access off and back on, my local yellow line was straight across the bottom while the remote blue line would hum along up and down with the content. As of right now, the total opposite is true.

Did we have a release sometime in the past that worked as I’ve described and then it was fixed? Maybe some remote chance I’ve had a lingering configuration item that was resolved just by flipping remote access off and back on? I’ve moved my database between a few systems over the years, but I couldn’t tell you the last time I looked at the remote access setting.

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