Is VPS for plex a good idea?

dosai

@ototos said:
How can you add cloudflare to plex and also use it on smart tv?

I have a vps that is cheap, it is not very efficient, but if I play files with the cdn from a site I know I never buffering, instead with plex I always have buffering ... playback is direct because the files I have are pre-encoded
Tks

I followed this,

https://quickbox.io/knowledge-base/setting-up-cloudflare-and-plex-cdn/

Hakim

My plex setup is in a VPS with plexdrive mount(Google drive mount). I have a shitty internet connection. In direct connection, streaming almost always buffers for me even if the latency is 50-80ms range. Using Cloudflare in the middle, I can stream smoothly at 4Mbps in my 5Mbps connection. My understanding is, Cloudflare has better peering. The latency between Cloudflare and my connection is around the same 50-55ms.

ototos

@dosai said:

@ototos said:
How can you add cloudflare to plex and also use it on smart tv?

I have a vps that is cheap, it is not very efficient, but if I play files with the cdn from a site I know I never buffering, instead with plex I always have buffering ... playback is direct because the files I have are pre-encoded
Tks

I followed this,

https://quickbox.io/knowledge-base/setting-up-cloudflare-and-plex-cdn/

i use windows vps :-(

chocolateshirt

@Hakim said:
My plex setup is in a VPS with plexdrive mount(Google drive mount). I have a shitty internet connection. In direct connection, streaming almost always buffers for me even if the latency is 50-80ms range. Using Cloudflare in the middle, I can stream smoothly at 4Mbps in my 5Mbps connection. My understanding is, Cloudflare has better peering. The latency between Cloudflare and my connection is around the same 50-55ms.

It doesn't make sense streaming a 4 Mbps movie from plex server with only with a 5 Mbps internet. On average to avoid any buffering process during streaming, the bandwidth you need at least 1.5 times of your movie bitrate.

So if you want to stream a movie that have 4 Mbps bitrate, you need minimum 6 Mbps internet bandwidth. For best experience, the latency between your plex server and your home internet should be less than 50 ms. Also rClone perform better for mounting your drive.

Hakim

@chocolateshirt said: It doesn't make sense streaming a 4 Mbps movie from plex server with only with a 5 Mbps internet. On average to avoid any buffering process during streaming, the bandwidth you need at least 1.5 times of your movie bitrate.

So if you want to stream a movie that have 4 Mbps bitrate, you need minimum 6 Mbps internet bandwidth. For best experience, the latency between your plex server and your home internet should be less than 50 ms. Also rClone perform better for mounting your drive.

The initial playback takes around 0.5-2 minutes & then I don't face any buffering. All my media is not exactly 4Mbps though. It ranges from 3-4Mbps mostly. When I stream I make sure I have access to the full 5Mbps. Other users in my network watch mostly youtube videos & my ISP has different bandwidth for YT, FB & Domestic internet(They call it BDIX).

rclone & plexdrive both use VFS mount. I choice plexdrive because by default it caches directory structure, uses memory for cache, I can control parallel connection, chunk, cache size easily. plexdrive worked faster than rclone for me last time checked. The other reason for choosing plexdrive is probably because I tried plexdrive before using rclone mount & plexdrive worked for my use case.