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How to QoS limit upload bandwidth to external plex clients?

DomenicCurulli

I am running plex media server on my Windows 2012 R2 server at home, and have friends connect externally to stream videos to their TV and PCs.
I only have a 2.4mbit upload which is good enough to stream to 1-2 people at one time, but it really slows the internet for local/internet users at my home while they are streaming.

I want to limit it so that plex media server clients outside the network are only given a total of 2mbit of bandwidth, which is shared as more people connect.

I have set a traffic selector:
Any -> Plex Service -> External (WAN) Address

And on the throttling tab bound to interface External (WAN) and changed the bandwidth to 200kbit/sec shared (just to test) but it makes no change.
So I tried

External (WAN) Address -> Plex Service -> Any

Still no good.

I tried setting a bandwidth pool the same way, no change.
The best I can do is 'limit uplink' on the 'status' tab and that sets a hard upload limit instantly, however it applies to all traffic not just plex.

Is it possible to limit plex to only use 2mbit of my upload?



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Parents
  • 0
    Hi, Dominic, and welcome to the UTM Community!

    Designing effective QoS rules is a bit of an art, so don't worry about having trouble understanding it in the beginning. First, delete all of your Download Throttling rules. Next, create two Bandwidth Pools on the External Interface, in order: (1) Guarantee 90kbits to 'Server -> Plex Service -> Internet' and (2) Guarantee 2000kbits to 'Any -> Any -> Internet'.

    The first rule is there only to make sure that traffic doesn't get consideration from the second rule. I suggested 2000kbits in the second with the idea that you might have some of your own uploads that you would like to prioritize over the streaming video, so you can lower that to 200 if you only want to be sure you can browse. For the first rule, I calculated (95% of 2200)-2000 = 90.

    On the Status tab, I would enable only 'Download Equalizer' for External and confirm that QoS is enabled for this interface.

    Cheers - Bob
     
    Sophos UTM Community Moderator
    Sophos Certified Architect - UTM
    Sophos Certified Engineer - XG
    Gold Solution Partner since 2005
    MediaSoft, Inc. USA
  • 0 in reply to BAlfson

    Hi BAlfson, thanks for the reply.

    I have set it up as you have outlined above, however plex streams are still using 2.4mbit (my entire upload connection).

    i have taken some screen shots, please let me know if I have gone wrong somewhere.

  • 0 in reply to DomenicCurulli
    I suspect that your Plex Service definition is for inbound instead of outbound packets.

    Cheers - Bob
     
    Sophos UTM Community Moderator
    Sophos Certified Architect - UTM
    Sophos Certified Engineer - XG
    Gold Solution Partner since 2005
    MediaSoft, Inc. USA
  • 0 in reply to BAlfson

    Thanks BAlfson, you may be right.

    I just swapped around the destination and source ports for plex, so it is now set as shown below.

    Is this correct?
    I'm still having plex use 100% of my upload speed.

    Could you please explain this setup to me, are we guaranteeing 2mbit to all traffic on the network (eg. my home users uploading videos) while plex is only guaranteed 90kbit? I don't think this is working, I did a speedtest while streaming plex externally and the speedtest upload speed only reached 1.4mbit, and plex lagged during this time.

    I think plex is being considered and including in 'all traffic' in that bandwidth pool.
    Wouldn't it be simpler to throttle plex to only use a max of 2mbit and the rest of the network just uses the remaining bandwidth? That way if my internet at home is too slow I can just bump plex down until internet speed at home is decent.

    Or is this not possible?

Reply
  • 0 in reply to BAlfson

    Thanks BAlfson, you may be right.

    I just swapped around the destination and source ports for plex, so it is now set as shown below.

    Is this correct?
    I'm still having plex use 100% of my upload speed.

    Could you please explain this setup to me, are we guaranteeing 2mbit to all traffic on the network (eg. my home users uploading videos) while plex is only guaranteed 90kbit? I don't think this is working, I did a speedtest while streaming plex externally and the speedtest upload speed only reached 1.4mbit, and plex lagged during this time.

    I think plex is being considered and including in 'all traffic' in that bandwidth pool.
    Wouldn't it be simpler to throttle plex to only use a max of 2mbit and the rest of the network just uses the remaining bandwidth? That way if my internet at home is too slow I can just bump plex down until internet speed at home is decent.

    Or is this not possible?

Children
  • 0 in reply to DomenicCurulli
    I think that until you know what the outbound Flex traffic is, you can't make any progress.

    Cheers - Bob
     
    Sophos UTM Community Moderator
    Sophos Certified Architect - UTM
    Sophos Certified Engineer - XG
    Gold Solution Partner since 2005
    MediaSoft, Inc. USA
  • 0 in reply to BAlfson

    Hey there, so I finally worked it out and this may help others trying to throttle external bandwidth with plex or something similar.
    This is what worked for me (slightly different to what was explained above):

    - in QoS on the status tab, enable the external interface and enter your downlink and uplink speed, and optionally tick download equalizer and upload optimizer

    - go to the traffic selectors tab, new traffic selector, give it a name, select the source as the server you're sending from, the service port source and destination (in my case 32400 -> 1:65535) and the destination to any and save

    - go to the bandwidth pool tab, select 'bound to interface:external', new bandwidth pool, give it a name, set the bandwidth you want to allocate to the service (in my case 2000kbit/s) and the most important step make sure to tick 'specify upper bandwidth limit' and put in the max bandwidth you want the service to  use, otherwise it'll use as much as it can get until the upload link is saturated. Select your traffic selector and hit save.

    That's all there is to it. You can change how much upload bandwidth the service is given by changing the two bandwidth numbers in the bandwidth pool area.

    Hope this helps someone, finally I can mark this job off my list

  • 0 in reply to DomenicCurulli

    You two just solved so many problems (created by me) on my UTM install!!!!!

  • 0 in reply to DomenicCurulli

    Hi,

     

    While this was very informative and interesting (as it resolved one of my QOS problems) you do know that you should tell plex this uploadlimit also ?

    As then plex knows you want to throttle and yourl friends will not have stuttering video (plex streams at full and utm throttling) but plex will then adjust its quality to compensate.

    Uploadlimit is easy to set in plex.

     

    Regards,

    B

  • 0 in reply to brunomc

    As far as I know, limiting bandwidth within Plex is a new feature and only available to Plex pass (paid) users is that correct?

    I've noticed a lot of stuttering for some external clients no matter what we set the stream to from the client side so not sure why this is. Some people have no issues, and the users experiencing lag have a fast internet connection.

    I have a trial for Plex pass here, may give that a go and limit clients via the Plex Media centre.

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