

I don’t think simply forwarding the port actually works with free Plex anymore. I think if the server has a different public IP from the client it asks you to pay, even if you’re connecting to the server over LAN.
Edit: That doesn’t appear to be true. I’m not entirely sure how Plex is checking whether you’re trying to stream remotely. In my case at least it works if I connect to my server using the LAN IP, but not if I use DNS (even though it resolves to the same IP). Maybe I’m missing something to allow it to work using the hostname.
I checked the logs and it said it was assuming a remote connection because there was an unknown hostname in the headers (I forget the exact wording). It was because the hostname I was using didn’t match the hostname configured in the server’s OS (one I set up on my local DNS server).