I've seen one of my friends who has an unraid media server, use PLEX to stream movies directly from his home server via the web to his phone and computer connected to a different wi-fi network.

 

He said that he did it by running the Plex media server, using a dynDNS domain, and opening up port 80 on his router to redirect to port 32400 I think of the unraid's internal IP address (192.168.1.10).

 

Unfortunately, I have an Apple Airport Extreme (802.11ac) base station, and according to literature in DynDNS, the new firmware prevents you from properly configuring dyndns. I was planning on using the DynDNS plugin on unraid and use that for my purpose and open and forward a port from my router to be redirected to port 32400 on 192.168.1.10 (my unraid static IP).

 

But I've also read here most people arguing that opening up unraid to the internet is a dangerous proposition because literally anyone could have access to the server and the material  inside it.

 

Is there a danger to doing thing this way, and if someone has implemented the ability to stream video from your unraid to an iphone or ipad on a different network, how was this achieved?

 

The only way to access the data on your system when you are outside your network is by opening up the ports. Your router is currently acting as a firewall by blocking outside entry.  People use dynDNS as you have said.  And yes, there is a risk your data will be vulnerable to outside intrusion.  I don't know all the ins and outs of it.  I have a setting in my Nighthawk router for dynDNS (or is it openDNS?) so different (albeit, more expensive) routers might make the process more easy/secure.

 

You might want to think about it this way.  After the initial thrill of being able to access shares from work or at a friends house, will you ever utilize this?  IMO, I very rarely find myself saying "Man, I wish I had access to my home media right now" when I was outside my network.  For data, that's a different story.  I am constantly remoting in to all my pc's from/at/to work, home, etc.

 

just my 2¢ 

The right and only way for someone who doesnt want to spend their life making sure they arent under attack is to turn on and use VPN on your router. If your router does not supor this the few bucks it takes to buy one that does will pay dividends in the end.

 

 

The right and only way for someone who doesnt want to spend their life making sure they arent under attack is to turn on and use VPN on your router. If your router does not supor this the few bucks it takes to buy one that does will pay dividends in the end.

 

Yes. Use a VPN, preferably IPsec.

Somewhat unrelated.  If you guys are using dyndns for free host IP address resolution, DYN is eliminating the free service in 30 (now 29 I think) days.  Just received an email from them announcing this.

 

 

an easier solution is to ssh tunnel. I dont know about iphone, but I can access my plex server fine using my android tablet and macbook.

 

yes, dyndns is stopping their free servis but you can use no-ip.org or afraid.org

If your router supports UPnP, then plex will try to automatically map an external port to the server.  Then you can just go to plex.tv and sign in (or create account) and get to your server from there.  This allows you to access it from anywhere without opening port 80 or any other work.

If your router supports UPnP, then plex will try to automatically map an external port to the server.  Then you can just go to plex.tv and sign in (or create account) and get to your server from there.  This allows you to access it from anywhere without opening port 80 or any other work.

 

My understanding of UPnP is that instead of you opening the port and forwarding the traffic to the internal IP:port.  In both cases you are still opening a port and forwarding the traffic.  In the case of the UNnP device it does the setup for you vs doing it by hand.  Me I prefer to know what port is open and would manually set it up.  I have UPnP turned off in my router as I don't want a piece of software to arbitrarily open a port.

If your router supports UPnP, then plex will try to automatically map an external port to the server.  Then you can just go to plex.tv and sign in (or create account) and get to your server from there.  This allows you to access it from anywhere without opening port 80 or any other work.

 

this is what I did and stayed secured.....

 

Myk

 

My understanding of UPnP is that instead of you opening the port and forwarding the traffic to the internal IP:port.  In both cases you are still opening a port and forwarding the traffic.  In the case of the UNnP device it does the setup for you vs doing it by hand.  Me I prefer to know what port is open and would manually set it up.  I have UPnP turned off in my router as I don't want a piece of software to arbitrarily open a port.

 

Yes it opens a port, but its random and not port 80.  Which is a small benefit.  The bigger benefit of doing it the Plex way is that you don't need a DynDNS (which is no longer free in 30 days), as you just need to login to plex.tv and click your server.

 

Its just easier in the long run (for non-advanced users).  And in Plex you can also manually choose which port is forwarded so you don't need to use UPnP.  Me, I'm not worried about UPnP as I use a pfSense router and can log and track down any unnecessarily open ports.

Thanks for all the replies:

 

I tried a test platform (without opening up my unraid) by doing the following:

 

1. Mounted my "movies" share on my Mac.

2. Started Plex Media Server on my Mac and pointed it to the mounted Movies folder for library.

3. Published the server to Plex.TV on a pre-defined port (32600)

4. I opened an account with No-IP.com for Dynamic DNS and downloaded the No-IP DNS Updater Daemon (since my Apple Airport Extreme does not support this within the router). The daemon runs on my Mac and links my server domain (myserver.no-ip.com) to my Public IP address. In addition, No-IP.com offered me the ability to re-direct traffic from port 80 for my domain directly to port 32600 of my home's public IP address (so, myserver.no-ip.com:80 ---> <my home public IP address>:32600

5. On my router, I opened Port 32600 to TCP and UDP traffic and redirected it to the <Local IP address of my Mac running Plex Media server>:Port 32600.

 

This seems to work very well and I am able to stream from my server directly to my iphone via its 4G connection, or to my neighbors wi-fi connection. The minute I type in -- myserver.no-ip.com/web on to any web browser, it shows me the login prompt for my PLEX server, and I can login and access my Plex server Web GUI without a problem.

 

My issues now are with security.

 

So as I understand it from all the posts here, some have suggested using a VPN as the safest method. I am a newbie so as much as I barely understand what and how a VPN behaves, setting one up on my unraid to directly protect my server from incoming connections is beyond my level of expertise. I've search these forums for an input but I cannot seem to find anyone who successfully set up OpenVPN and was able to stream securely using Plex.

 

The second possibility is to do what some of you have suggested, is to simply login to Plex.TV and access the server that way. But I'm not sure I see how this is any more secure since even when I go via Plex.TV, the Plex.TV website knows that port 32600 is open on my public IP address and connects to my server that way? (This is because I manually opened the port as opposed to allowing the device to open it up by itself).

 

Any other suggestions? Or any tutorials floating out there about how to get a VPN running?