Hi guys,
I have read tons of post on this subreddit talking about how VPNs block remote access to your server. I currently acquire media and run my plex server off the same M4 Mac Mini and therefore have a VPN running.
I was wondering if anyone has tried to configure a USB network adapter to route plex media server traffic through while maintaining VPN connection for downloading through the built in Ethernet jack?
My other option will be running a virtual machine for downloading and run the server on the Mac without a VPN.
Sorry if this is a dumb question, I am not a network guy.
Does your VPN have split tunnel functionality? I use PIA with split tunnel and all of my secret stuff goes through that virtual VPN adapter, while Plex is not on the VPN at all and goes through the open Ethernet adapter. Now you do need to tell Plex which adapter to use if you end up setting up split tunnel.
I have my download client configured to use my VPN as the network adapter.
QbitTorrent is easy to set up this way.
I just let protonvpn run on normal settings outside that and have no issues accessing my library from outside the network.
I am not an expert but I asked the AI and it says you can ip route different traffic via specific hardware adapters, so in your case WiFi and Ethernet. So it should be possible to route all traffic of the plex server through Ethernet and the rest through WiFi for example. For specifics and customisation I’m sure chatgpt can give you detailed instructions.
Since messing with the traffic on your machine can maybe cause some errors I recommend starting with a backup point!
I’m not sure exactly what scenario you’re questioning here. I run Plex server on a NAS that connects via a VPN and I connect back to it via a VPN (using Plex relay to avoid exposing the NAS to the internet - no port forwarding of UPnP on my router). No issues in this scenario.
What’s the point of putting a Plex server behind a VPN? Why rout all your users around the world?
Apparently split tunneling is extremely hard to implement on apple silicon or that’s what ExpressVPN says.
Split tunnelling works for me using Windscribe vpn. It did take them a good while to get it on the Mac though. I use a N100 windows pc for torrenting my ‘free legal Linux iso distros’ and I use that with split tunneling. Got to say the Mac mini m4 makes the n100 machine look pathetic as a server.