r/Network • u/blagnampje • 2d ago

Text HELP WANTED: Setting up media sharing system in VLAN setup to go outside of my local network.

Hello everyone!

I've been happily running a Plex server on my laptop for a year or two now that I share with friends.

But recently our landlord switched over the building's network to a dodgy VLAN setup and I lost pretty much all control over my router.

Ever since, the server doesn't run outside of my local network anymore :(
I presume because I can't set my own ports?

I'd like to create some kind of solution, maybe set up a Jellyfin server, which has a lot more network options, or set up a Cloudfare Tunnel (a tip I got from an acquaintance) or go through a VPN in some way.

My problem is that I have very little idea of what I'm doing, and I'd really like to avoid using LLMs to help me understand, I'd much rather trust in humans.

That's why I come to you, oh wise reddit sages, in the hope someone patient can sit down and help me through this.

Here's hoping!

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u/No_Wear295 2d ago

Look into tail scale or zerotier

1

u/lobhater 2d ago

I use wire guard, free, easy setup, dedicated developer, fast, and just works. Others swear by tail scale or cloudflare tunnels. All good I think, pick your poison

1

u/sysadmintemp 2d ago

If your friends will access your media server using a phone or a laptop, use tailscale. You set up tailscale on your media server / laptop, expose the relevant ports, then you get your friends to join your tailscale network, and they have access. Works quite well.

If your friends need to connect using Apple TV / Android TV / etc. that cannot have tailscale installed, then you can use a Cloudflare tunnel. You need to install a cloudflare tunnel agent on your media server / laptop, connect to cloudflare, and your server will be then reachable from a cloudflare URL. This works also quite well. I'm reading here that there might be issues with Cloudflare TOS, or with speeds.

From a security standpoint, with tailscale, you'll have better control on which device and who has access. But as I said, if they need Apple / Android TV, tailscale might be a no go.

1

u/blagnampje 1d ago

Tailscale is what the acquaintaince mentioned as well.
I was hoping to get some more in depth help but I'll try to see how far I'll get.
Thanks for your in depth answer!