Struggling to get Port Forward Working.

[John-Yberllan]

I am trying to get my plex account to access my plex service which is on a port on a Meraki Switch. In my MX unit I have created a forward rule with the public IP and port used 1.2.3.4: 34514  Plex is not getting forwarded. What am I missing? 

[Mod comment: Edited IP to be a dummy IP address]

[PhilipDAth]

Is the public IP directly on the WAN interface of the MX, or is the MX sitting behind another router doing NAT?

[John-Yberllan]

Hi

That may the the answer 🙂

I have a modem / router. This may be doing the NAT. 

I did try making that unit a modem only but the MX up-link would not work. 

Kind regards

john

[Nash]

Check the IP address on your WAN uplink(s) on your MX. Are they in 1918 space? If so, yes, it sounds like you may be getting a DHCP address from your modem.

In order to move your public IP onto your MX, you'll need to put your modem into bridge mode. If you call your ISP, this should be something they can assist with if you've never done it before. You will need physical access to your modem/router and firewall, a laptop, and a second good cable to jack in with.

Assuming you have a static IP, your ISP may also need to allow an additional mac address on their upstream device so that you can associate your MX. A lot of them are using hardware address provisioning now. You can calculate your MX port addresses here: https://documentation.meraki.com/MX/Other_Topics/Calculating_MX_WAN_MAC_Addresses

If you've got a model with two WAN uplinks by default, perhaps configure your static IP onto the WAN link you're not using. Then you can just swap the cable for testing, and leave an interface set as DHCP in case you have to revert back to current state. (Assuming that your ISP provides DHCP on your type of link. Your mileage will vary here.)

You can also setup a secondary WAN link on a 64/67, but you would do so by converting port 4 (64)/port 2 (67) a la: https://documentation.meraki.com/MX/Installation_Guides/MX67%2F%2FMX68_Installation_Guide#Setting_up...

[John-Yberllan]

Many thanks that is very helpful. 

[Nash]

You're welcome! Can you tell I've spent A Lot Of Time wrangling with ISPs to do exactly this? So much time. 

Like four hours in the last week with CenturyLink trying to accomplish this simple h*cking task because nobody knew which group I needed to talk to.

I hope you're able to get that forward up and running. BTW, in the future, I recommend pretending you're CloudFlare instead of posting your actual IP address. We now know your IP and what service is running on that, so you've created a vulnerability. In fact, I'd edit your IP out of your initial post if you can, or ask a community manager for assistance if you can't.

[SoCalRacer]

I am assuming you changed the port. Typically 32400 is the port used for this. My recommendation would be to revert to default, then test, when you get a working config then change the port. Below are some Plex links that might help. Also might do a packet capture to verify the traffic is hitting the MX. Also something to make sure is that you are not behind the MX when trying this (use outside connection, LTE, etc.)

https://support.plex.tv/articles/200289506-remote-access/

https://support.plex.tv/articles/200931138-troubleshooting-remote-access/