First, you don't really need a VPN to view Plex content. Plex can be configured to require a secure connection. That ought to be enough. But if you want the VPN tunnel for some reason, the answer is simple: self-host your own VPN server. I recommend OpenVPN or Wireguard.
The vpn was a general privacy and security addition. I just have it on all the time. I’ll look into wireguard.
You can also try tailscale which is easy to set up, but their wireguard implementation is quite a bit slower (latency).
I've used wireguard for a few years. The container isn't essential, but I prefer to have all my service configs contained and separate from the host OS.
So basically you'll just have one WAN->LAN port forward for Wireguard. Connect to that remotely, and you'll be able to access everything inside your LAN.
You had your Plex open to the public with that setup. That's not secure at all, unless you wanted anyone to access it.
If you can port forward from your own IP and it's kind of stable, you can run a wire guard server to access your network and Plex.
If you can't portforward you can try a mesh network like tailscale.. there are other solutions as well. The fastest apparently is netwmaker, but you need to have a server with public IP. You can use a cheap VPS.
Tailscale would take less than 30 minutes to set up including software install and login on server and any client device (phone, laptop, etc). It uses wireguard, it just hosts the public part for connection management.
I use Tailscale with my Jellyfin server.
This was my recommendation too. Simplest setup you could ask for to create a VPN connection between devices with wireguard as the base.
You don't need to port forward or anything for Plex to work outside your network, right? That's the whole point of Plex. All my friends can access my server wherever.
Are you using aVPN? I have Mullvad running
Nope.
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