10mo ago

How do you play/stream media from your server during offline hours?

Hi there!

Wondering what types of setup people have that allow them to, while the internet is down, still watch/stream media from their servers. I have a stacked Jellyfin library that, and would like to see this feature/setup in my own house. My Unraid server is on the other side of the house from where the living room is. Is there actually a sane way to achieve this?

39 comments

How do you not do that? It's all in your local network, how would it not work offline..?
- I have everything connected over Tailscale, and strictly only use IPs delegated through this system. So i realise now that I have to step away from that if I want to make it work locally :P
  
  Talescale proper gives you an external dependency (and a lot of security risk), but the underlying technology (wireguard) does not have the same limitation. You should just deploy wireguard yourself; it's not as scary as it sounds.
  
  Why would you run local traffic over the VPN?
  
  You should still be able to access everything through tailscale once you switch everything over to use local IP addresses.
If all the devices are in the same network you should be able to stream content even without internet. I had to wait for 5 days to my ISP set up my internet on my new address and I watched my jellyfin library in the meantime with no problems.
You shouldn't have the do anything specific at all, local network stuff works without internet and Jellyfin doesn't rely on any internet servers like Plex does for authentication.
- Plex allows you to add a list of local IPs that can access your server without authentication, just have to be sure to do it while your internet is up or else you won't be able to log in to edit the setting.
  
  It does but it's a bit of a weird way of doing things.
  
  Not a great feature when you have multiple people in the same house with different users and watch histories.
At least for me, this works out of the box.
Some requirements:
All the devices need to be on the same network
DNS needs to work or you have to use IP adresses for connecting. I've configured local DNS on my router.
Offline hours? Is that something that happens often enough to need a work around?
- No not really... Would just like it to be an option IN CASE it were to happen...

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
CGNAT	Carrier-Grade NAT
DHCP	Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, automates assignment of IPs when connecting to a network
DNS	Domain Name Service/System
IP	Internet Protocol
IoT	Internet of Things for device controllers
NAS	Network-Attached Storage
NAT	Network Address Translation
Plex	Brand of media server package
SSL	Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption
TLS	Transport Layer Security, supersedes SSL
VPN	Virtual Private Network
VPS	Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)

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My setup is pretty simple. I use static DNS on my router, which points my jellfin domain to the local address when on my LAN, and I set up DHCP to point my devices to use my router for DNS. It's incredibly simple, so all I do is type in my jellyfin domain and it works optimally wherever I am.
I actually had my internet go out for a couple hours and we were able to watch our content just fine.
During a rare internet-but-not-power outage, my roku tv refused to turn on or give me any option to switch inputs because it couldn't update.
- Yeah between the forced binding arbitration and their claims to wanting to start pre-roll ads, Roku is dead to me, I will never buy another device from them nor recommend them to anyone.
I have a single network with my jellyfin server and wifi devices, I run Pi-Hole with DNS for internal things and can use Jellyfin while at home or out and about.
In Pi-Hole look for Local DNS Records to add your own suff
I probably have something set up incorrectly, but I get no jellyfin when the internet goes down. My jellyfin is on one of those n100 beelink boxes which can't seem to use the 2.5 ghz ethernet when this happens. I can access it from a browser (with no other web pages available)on the box itself, but it doesn't want to send it out to the network to my roku. That's happening right now.
Simply a NAS with Samba connections from all local clients.
I have a NFS and Samba share to my NAS. And Jellyfin exports things via DLNA / UPnP so there is always a local route to the storage. Also I've set the IP address of the server in the /etc/hosts file of my router. So even when internet is down, the DNS can resolve it.
Plex allows this as long as you set whatever devices local IP on the allow without authorization list. I also know that plex just gets shit on the fediverse. Jellyfin doesn’t have local allowance baked in? I’ve never used it.
- Jellyfin doesn’t have local allowance baked in? I’ve never used it.
  Nope and that is also not needed, since it's not a cloud dependent service.
  
  What? I’m confused by the question the OP asked if it’s just automatically that way.
- It probably does tbh, I'll have to check the documentation to double-check though. Anything that isn't foss tends to get a handful indeed; Jellyfin genuinely is a better experience than Plex imo.
  
  I’ll prolly give it a shot at some point. I bought lifetime plex long before jellyfin was a thing. Is there an experience similar to plexamp? It’s too good.
  
  I know for me I had to give Plex the local IPs to force local streaming because it would try to stream remote even on local network.

39 comments