Comment on That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing
ryan@social.binarydad.com 11 months ago@ifItWasUpToMe @ripcord I'm not sure if I'm understanding. What costs are there to plex remote streaming? The streaming aspect is coming directly from my plex server public IP. I know there is some option that proxies the traffic through their servers but this isn't enabled by default.
Mainly STUN and TURN servers to allow NAT traversal without having to configure port forwarding and leave your server exposed to the internet.
It’ll use those servers to setup a peer-to-peer connection which at that point you are streaming directly to clients.
If you want to setup a VPN for your users, or open/forward public ports to your server then you do not need to pay.
Do you have a source for this claim that the new pricing scheme only applies to the Plex Relays? As far as I can tell it applies to anything they consider “remote access”, regardless of whether it goes through their servers or not.
I don’t have a source but if you setup a VPN to your home there’s no way plex could know that you aren’t actually home. So as long as local streaming works, then streaming over VPN would work as well.
Similar thing with port forwarding on your router, except it’s much worse for security.
Be that as it may, the Plex official guide for setting up “remote streaming” walks you through port forwarding. That implies that when they say remote streaming, they mean port forwarding by default. I then had to go digging to find mention of the Relay service which seems to be a fallback. (Apparently it isn’t even supported by all clients)
Surely if they meant they’d start charging for Relays they’d mention that explicitly, and not use the term “remote streaming”?
CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee 11 months ago
The Plex Relay is enabled by default and is used anytime people can’t directly connect to your server like if your port forwarding is screwed up.