Yes we’re slowly (or in some places, rapidly) moving towards a world where consumer connections are behind CG-NAT for IPv4.
Roughly there are three main cases here:
-
single stack IPv4 behind CG-NAT: this is mainly mobile networks, but increasingly households are using 4G routers to replace fixed lines. Plex could do two things to work through CG-NAT here: tunnelling, which they do with Plex Relay (max 2 Mbit though) or UDP hole punching, which is difficult as Plex currently is TCP-based.
-
dual stack IPv4+v6, with IPv4 behind CG-NAT (this is called DS-Lite). This is where DSL/Cable/Fibre is going, and millions of people are already in this situation. Plex Relay still works in this case, but the future here for Plex is fully supporting IPv6 without the current manual workarounds (getting your own domain name, setting up an AAAA record, set custom server addresses in PMS). There’s a feature request here, so please vote: https://forums.plex.tv/t/ipv6-support-for-myplex/
-
single stack IPv6 with CG-NAT64/DNS64. This is how most mobile operators are rolling out IPv6 now, so this is what households behind a 4G/5G connection will work with. Since NAT64 is carrier grade, this means no portmapping and incoming IPv4 connections. So again, proper IPv6 support is the way forward.
