So I have an issue where when connected to the wifi network at work I am unable to obtain a direct connection to my Plex server at home. It must be blocked at work as I can connect to my mobile phone hotspot and get a direct connection.
What’s weird but at the same time bloody brilliant is that although indirect connections to Plex - whereby the client connects to Plex.TV which then connects to the Plex Server like a relay - are limited to 2Mbps, if I use the Infuse app on my iPad Pro the connection has no limit! It shows up in my Plex dashboard as an indirect connection but direct playing both video and audio at 20Mbps.
How is this? How does Infuse circumvent the 2Mbps throttle? I’ve attached a couple of pics.
The first pic shows direct Play on a direct connection on my Mobile phones Hotspot. It buffers terribly and is unwatchable.
The second pic shows Infuse on the left and the Plex client on the right when both are connected to my work wifi. You will notice both are indirect connections but the Plex client is throttled to 2Mbps and is therefore forced to transcode at the server. The Infuse client on the other hand direct plays at 20Mbps and is as smooth as silk with no buffering. How does this work? It’s pretty much made the Plex client redundant. Does the Infuse client use a different outgoing port than the Plex client to connect to the plex server? One which in my case is not blocked by my work’s wifi?
Infuse doesn’t support transcoding. It’ll direct play everything ignoring anything you have set for bandwidth limits. The limits in plex server are there to tell the transcoded what to target for quality.
It’s not a limit set by me. My Plex Server is set to unlimited upload speeds. But if a direct connection to the Plex server isn’t possible it uses plex.tv as a relay for an indirect connection. In such instances Plex throttles the bandwidth to only 2Mbps. This is what I get when using the Plex client and the Plex server transcodes to get under 2Mbps. But with Infuse, even with an indirect connection I can stream above 2Mbps. I streamed last night on an indirect connection at 34Mbps.
Infuse will always try and direct play the video, so unless there is a hard limit in place (like an upload bandwidth setting) Plex should be able to provide the full stream, without transcoding.
It’s interesting to see it’s working with indirect connections as well too.
I’m guessing in your Plex app in Settings → Quality you have ‘Remote Streaming’ set to 720p HD 2 Mbps and you’d need to change that to 1080p HD (High) 20 Mbps.
Nope. No limits set in Plex by myself. Plex applies a limit of 2Mbps to indirect connections and there is nothing that can be done about this. But strangely when using Infuse with an indirect connection to my Plex server the 2Mbps limit is not applied.
This article explains Indirect connections…
Note: When I stream remotely from anywhere other than Work wifi I can achieve a direct connection and max out my home fibre’s 19Mbps upload speed.
If you look at the attached capture below, the one on the left is Infuse and the one on the right is the Plex client. Both indirect connections but the Plex one is forced to transcode (because of the 2Mbps indirect limit and because of the TrueHD audio). Infuse can direct play smooth as silk with no buffering. This would not be possible with a 2Mbps limit.
