Remote connection to plex server seemingly low bandwidth & I can't figure out why
Hi y'all, so I've been tryna crack at this for just over a week now and I'm stumped. I have this server running on my windows 11 work computer, here are the specs:
- 64GB DDR4 at 4800 MT/s
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
- The media is on a windows storage pool spread across a few m.2's and a couple hdd's. Not ideal but it's temp. OS is on a separate M.2
- AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 12-Core Processor
This is at an office building that does web hosting, so pretty reliable internet with fallbacks, and I get about 400/400 up/down avg across various servers and speed tests. I know that's not going to be accurate to my connection to my remote clients, but I'm not sure how to test a direct connection between devices. Closest thing I've found was my FireStick TV has a debug mode that let's me see plex's bandwidth, and I can watch it occasionally chill at 9-10mbps, but then it drops down to about 1-2mbps and stays there. Strangely I've found swapping subtitles briefly brings back the 9-10, but then it usually goes back down and I have to repeat this "trick" every few minutes to keep the video actively playing and not buffering.
I've tried watching from my phone on my home network, which gets about 40mbps download, should be more than enough for my 1080p 15mbps media. I've tried watching from my phone on cellular, I've tried 2 different TV's I have at my home, I tried 2 different computers at my home. I've had 3 different family members try to remote in, be able to see everything and scroll, but then not be able to watch from their various devices either, and their on various different networks across the states.
I find it hard to believe transcoding is an issue, my hardware should be more than up to the challenge and I've made sure most of my videos are compatible anyways(MKV x264), the only thing I've seen it occasionally transcode is the audio of some that have DTS, but it buffers even on media that it can directplay the video and audio(AAC). I've confirmed this on my tv and computers dashboard and in the debug while playing, and generally it seems like for some reason plex specifically just has a reduced bandwidth or some kind of throttling going on?
tried dropping to 720p. Plays for a bit longer periods but still hits constant buffering when the bitrate drops to the 1-2mbps. I've tried running it through a vpn, I've tried changing the port, I've tried restarting my computer, my client devices, plex media server. I'm able to watch other streaming services like netflix, disney+, youtube, amazon video, etc. just fine on all other devices. Also local playing of the media works fine, no buffering perfect clear beautiful video. It's just remote with issues. I've also disabled the relay connection and made sure they're direct, so it is a direct connection despite somehow being a really low expected bandwidth. My home and office are less than 20 miles apart.
There's more I've tried that I can't remember right now, lol, it's a long list, but I'm frustrated and running out of ideas. I just wanna be able to watch this stuff from home man, paid for plex pass for the remote and doesn't really feel worth it if all I get is 1-2mbps of usable bandwidth.
Really appreciate any and all help, and if need be I can try and provide logs, just not sure how to upload them. Also not sure if they'll help explain what seems to me to be some sort of network issue, but I'm just baffled at what that issue could be.
the results I get from my phone on cellular, quite a bit greater than what I'm getting on plex.
Tautulli dashboard from the cellular phone stream test, cuz why not?
That speed test is setup on my server, on the same port as plex, which is the default 32400. If I'm reading this right, I seem to get decent enough connection even on my phones cellular right now to be able to stream this in og quality of 14.9mpbs, yet plex is getting 1mbps. Seems to me like the ports forwarded properly if the speedtest worked on the same port, and the speeds seem to be there. I can do another test when I get home to actually see my home networks speed to the server, but seems like this demonstrated somethings up.