I'm planning to open up my Plex to approximately 20 remote users and am curious if it's wise / necessary to first put Plex behind a reverse proxy.

23 minutes ago, nscherneck said:

I'm planning to open up my Plex to approximately 20 remote users and am curious if it's wise / necessary to first put Plex behind a reverse proxy.

I am supporting four remote users with just the standard port forwarded in my router to the Plex server.  Ports forwarded to specific applications do not usually present any security issues.

 

Opening up ports on your server, on the other hand, could expose you to all sorts of nastiness.

 

A reverse proxy is an option, but, I have not seen any security problems with standard Plex remote access via a forwarded port and a ddns server name.

I support just myself on my phone on my Plex server and I use a reverse proxy. If you have any more than one or two services, it actually becomes easier to use a reverse proxy instead of port forwarding. Then there are those services that simply do not work at all properly in many areas without one, like next cloud. It also reduces or even eliminates the need for using a VPN to remote access your server. Hoopster has a very valid point that it doesn't give you any real security concerns forwarding specific ports to specific services but it does make it more convenient from a user point of view, IMO. plex.domain.com is way easier to remember than an IP address. Personally, I have a good 10+ sub-domains proxied to services on my server and I like the convenience a lot. You also do have that peace of mind knowing all the traffic is SSL, which is nice.

 

To be fair, I would 100% consider this opinion. Especially since I already owned a domain I have had since I was 11 years old that I was already paying for and also one for my Gsuites account. NginxProxyManager also makes it very easy to do. For me it was an easy decision to make.

5 minutes ago, cammelspit said:

NginxProxyManager also makes it very easy to do. For me it was an easy decision to make

@nscherneck If you are going to use reverse proxy, this is the easiest way to set it up.  I am in the process of setting NPM on my server as well.

 

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but with the whole DDoS issues lately (which apparently is patched), I'd like to put my Plex instance behind a reverse proxy.

 

I've got swag configured following SpaceInvaderOne's great videos, and have may other services already running, but my only question is whether it's safe to change the network from Host to the custom docker network (aka "proxynet" in SpaceInvader's video).

 

I believe once you've got Plex running behind the reverse proxy, you can add a variable to the Plex container "ADVERTISE_IP" set to the subdomain:443 which will populate the "Custom server access URLs" in the Network settings.