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this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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Plex
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What's your hosting solution for external access? I'm asking because right now, Plex has a lot going for it in terms of allowing me to securely host my own server and share it with the people I want who are outside my network without actually having to open up ports or compromise my network security in any way. I couldn't imagine hosting costs on a cloud VM for a decently sized, fairly actively used media server, assuming you wanted to go that route. I guess you could set up a reverse proxy on a cloud VM and forward traffic into your local network, but then there's still the added network traffic costs for your VM.
I think a lot of people use Tailscale and add their external clients to a dedicated tailnet. How are you hosting Plex without opening any ports though?
I think they use Plex Relay which is also limited bandwidth since it uses Plex's servers.
I actually do both. Friends and family who are on the plex aren't on the tailscale network. But my personal clients are. I mean, not all of them. You obviously can't add a Roku stick or a smart TV to a tailscale network. Not trivially, of course. Maybe you could custom engineer a solution, but it might not be worth the effort. As I said in a previous comment, though, the best solution might be a dedicated cloud VM that serves as a reverse proxy into your network and which forwards traffic - either by having them both on the same tailnet and one just forwards traffic on specific ports, specifically plex's - or a reverse SSH tunnel. If I had to do it, I'd probably go the first route. Still, the network traffic costs might make doing that prohibitive. But it also might not. I haven't looked into it.
Currently, I have a DDNS set up with NoIP with port forwarding on my router.
The best solution requires a bit of technical ability: reverse proxy. Things like Nginx Proxy Manager are really not that hard to use, especially on something like unraid but requires a bit of infrastructure and time to setup. The advantage of this is you can then get into the world of self hosting and do stuff like file sync (seafile), password manager (bitwarden), etc. The list is endless once you have a reverse proxy setup.
The easiest way however is to use tailscale to setup a VPN and access it via local IP address.
Sure, but the VPN alone is only a partial solution - if your computer is on the same tailscale VPN as your plex server, you can create a peer to peer connection without plex pass. But for third party apps - like a smart TV or a Roku or whatever - those don't have tailscale clients and they probably never will. Which means you would have to produce some kind of extra solution, like utilizing a raspberry pi or other portable micro pc that can bind to the tailscale network but also project video to the television. Which is very clunky. Right now, I feel like there is no drop in replacement for Plex if you want to share you server with friends or family while also maximizing your own security and keeping self-hosting costs to a "minimum."