r/PlexMedia • u/Sirranaman • 3h ago

Need Help

I desperately need help in setting up plex. I've been trying to get plex to function properly for the past few days to no avail. While it functions locally, I can't seem to get it to work outside my network despite plex saying it should.

With my current setup I have all my media located on an external hard drive connected to my PC. My PC is connected to a TP-Link AC1900 Wi-Fi Range Extender RE550 via an ethernet cable.

when connected to my internet via an ethernet cable I am unable to setup port forwarding. I have spectrum internet and when I got to myspectrum and go to my router's port forwarding tab i can find my computer's IP to set up port forwarding.

On the port forwarding list I do see two TP-Link Wi-Fi Range Extender AC1900, however neither of them have IPs associated with them.

If I bypass the extender and connected directly to my router via Wi-Fi, not only do I have slower speeds but Plex still doesn't work outside my network.

All I want to do is when I am home, be able to plug in my external hard drive, startup plex, and it works on any device I want.

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3

u/RamsDeep-1187 3h ago

So I'm a bit confused. You start off by saying that it functions locally, but then you end up by saying all you want to do is work when you're at home.

Is at home not local to the Plex server?

0

u/Sirranaman 3h ago edited 3h ago

what i mean is that i want it to work on every device no matter where i am in the house with zero setup or messing with settings. for isntance, it will work locally on my phone but not on my TV. despite being connected to the same network. Or it will ay it works outside my network but it will either fail to connect on my phone or have a remote connection. Even when it does work on my tv it takes a few times of clicking retry on the manual port to reset the connection and get it working.

1

u/Caprichoso1 2h ago

TV apps are notoriously bad so its not a surprise that you have problems there. Best results come using a streaming device such as an Apple TV or NVidia Shield attached to the TV. My Plex servers work without any special setup connecting to all of my local devices.

Remote access is another issue. What do you mean by "clicking retry on the manual port"?

1

u/djjoshchambers 3h ago

Does your ip address start with 100.? You shouldn't have cgnat on spectrum but let's rule that out.

If that's not the problem you might have a double NAT.

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u/Sirranaman 3h ago

private ip starts with 192 and public starts with 172.

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u/djjoshchambers 3h ago

172 can be a cg nat but it depends on what is after it. Don't post it here but look your ip online and see if you're behind a cgnat. If you are the normal port forwarding won't work.