Cannot access Emby outside home network

[MrGiles 2]

Since switching ISP and installing a new router, I have been unable to access my Emby server away from home.  I have gone through all the recommended troubleshooting and as far as I can tell everything is set up correctly, but outside my home network I just get the message 'unable to reach Emby NAS'.   I have the same connectivity issue on the Android app and on my laptop.  I'm running Emby server on a QNAP NAS, and I can still access the NAS remotely, just not Emby.  

Any help or suggested further steps would be appreciated, as I'm no expert on network settings

 

 

[ebr 16665]

Exactly which step in the troubleshooter fails?

Connecting from Client Apps

[MrGiles 2]

That's the problem - I don't know where the failure is.  I've done everything suggested, set up port forwarding, but still no connection.  However, when I tried canyouseeme.org, it didn't match the IP address on the Emby dashboard

[ebr 16665]

1 minute ago, MrGiles said:

when I tried canyouseeme.org, it didn't match the IP address on the Emby dashboard

Sorry, I don't follow.  You would need to provide the IP address to canyouseeme.

Can you tell us exactly what you did and what happened?

[js28194 70]

Have you been migrated to CGNAT?

[MrGiles 2]

Just tried canyouseeme.org again, and it pre-populated with the IP address shown on the Emby dashboard (for remote access), but shows port 80 - this worked fine and confirmed the port was not blocked.  But the port number on Emby dashboard is the default 8096 - if I enter that port number in canyouseeme, it cannot see the service and times out.  

My router does have something called NAT enabled but I've no idea what this is.

[ebr 16665]

Please go through the document I linked.  You need to set up port forwarding on  your router.

[Luke 42973]

Please let us know which steps succeed and which ones do not, and then we'll take it from there. Thanks.

[MrGiles 2]

I have worked through all the steps on External Connections  in the linked guide.  I've tried enabling UPnP on my router with automatic port mapping enabled on Emby server, but that didn't work - still couldn't connect outside my home network.  So I disabled that and tried manual port forwarding - set this up as per the instructions, verified external IP address etc, but still no success.  Whatever I do, I cannot access Emby outside my home network

 

[Luke 42973]

9 hours ago, MrGiles said:

I have worked through all the steps on External Connections  in the linked guide.  I've tried enabling UPnP on my router with automatic port mapping enabled on Emby server, but that didn't work - still couldn't connect outside my home network.  So I disabled that and tried manual port forwarding - set this up as per the instructions, verified external IP address etc, but still no success.  Whatever I do, I cannot access Emby outside my home network

 

Hi, can you please show us how you setup port forwarding in your router?

[ebr 16665]

Hi.  And...

On 8/20/2026 at 2:39 AM, Luke said:

Please let us know which steps succeed and which ones do not, 

 

[marriedman 104]

On 8/18/2026 at 6:30 AM, MrGiles said:

Since switching ISP

Stab in the dark, did you switch to a Fiber ISP? If so, you have the situation that js8194 was asking about.

On 8/18/2026 at 4:23 PM, js28194 said:

Have you been migrated to CGNAT?

In the simplest summary possible, you are behind your ISP's giant router.  Here is a basic visualization:

STANDARD (Cable/DSL) SETUP
═══════════════════════════

 ┌──────────┐     ┌──────────┐     ┌──────────┐     ┌──────────┐
 │ Computer │───▶│  Router  │───▶│  Modem   │───▶│ Internet │
 └──────────┘     └──────────┘     └──────────┘     └──────────┘
                                     (Public IP
                                    assigned here)


FIBER + CGNAT SETUP
════════════════════

 ┌──────────┐     ┌──────────┐     ┌──────────┐     ┌──────────┐     ┌──────────┐
 │ Computer │───▶│  Router  │───▶│   ONT    │───▶│  CGNAT   │───▶│ Internet │
 └──────────┘     └──────────┘     └──────────┘     └──────────┘     └──────────┘
                                   (Optical-to-      (ISP-side NAT —
                                    Ethernet          you get a
                                    conversion,       private/shared
                                    no NAT/routing    IP, not a real
                                    happening here)   public one)

I ended up paying for a static IP address from my ISP. Then a domain from porkbun and a simple caddy config running on my main home server.

It sounds hard at first, but you can use ChatGPT or Claude to build everything for you if it gets to be to much for you.

[Luke 42973]

@MrGiles?

[MrGiles 2]

I set up port forwarding in my router menu as per the attached screenshot.  I entered the IP address & default port & saved it.  The saved configurations then show as per second screenshot.

[ebr 16665]

You blanked out the IP addresses.  Those should be local so nothing sensitive about them.  What are they?  Do they match your server address?

And, one more time...

On 8/20/2026 at 2:39 AM, Luke said:

Please let us know which steps succeed and which ones do not, and then we'll take it from there. Thanks.

 

[marriedman 104]

You also haven't said what your ISP/internet connection is, please provide that.

[MrGiles 2]

IP addresses match the addresses shown in the Emby dashboard (192.168.0.103)

I'm not sure what you expect me to say about which steps succeed and which do not.  I've completed each step in the guidance / troubleshooting, and I still can't access Emby outside my home network.

My ISP is Three, using a 5G Fixed Wireless Access router (no landline).

As an experiment, I installed Plex Server on my NAS and Plexamp on my android phone, and it worked outside my home network without any additional configuration, so I don't understand why Emby won't work.

 

 

[pwhodges 2090]

Plex can get round some problems by routing all your traffic through their servers; Emby leaves you your privacy.  It's not a level comparison.

Can you confirm (the tests are in the documents you claim to have gone through) that you are not behind cgNAT?  The situation with Three is that only some of their masts support turning it off - their older masts still require cgNAT even on fixed connections.

Paul

Edited 22 minutes ago by pwhodges

[vdatanet 1667]

9 minutes ago, MrGiles said:

My ISP is Three, using a 5G Fixed Wireless Access router (no landline).

Thanks for the extra detail — and the Plex experiment is actually the most useful thing you've told us. It doesn't contradict the diagnosis, it confirms it.

Plex works because it has a relay service. Your Plex server keeps an outbound connection open to plex.tv, and when a client can't reach you directly, the traffic is tunnelled through Plex's servers. Since your server initiates that connection outward, nothing ever has to come *in* to your network — so CGNAT doesn't matter. Worth noting that the relay is capped at around 1-2 Mbps, which is plenty for Plexamp (music) but would struggle badly with 1080p video.

Emby Connect is not the same thing, and this trips up a lot of people. It only stores your server's public address and handles sign-in — it saves you typing an address into the client. The client then connects *directly* to your server. If there's no open port, there's no connection. There is no proxy in the middle.

So: behind CGNAT, Plex works and Emby doesn't. That's not a misconfiguration on your end — you've done the steps correctly, the problem is structural.

To confirm it: log into your router's admin page and look at the WAN IP, then compare it with what a "what is my IP" site reports. (192.168.0.103 is your server's LAN address — that's not the one to compare.) If they don't match, and especially if the WAN address starts with 100.64-100.127 or 10.x, that's carrier-grade NAT. Three's 5G home broadband is CGNAT across the board and they don't offer a public or static IP on those plans, so port forwarding will never work no matter what you configure.

The fix I'd recommend is Tailscale:

- Install it on your NAS (it's in the package centre on Synology/QNAP, or run it as a Docker container) and on your Android phone.
- No ports, no router changes.
- In the Emby app, connect to the server's Tailscale IP (100.x.y.z) on port 8096.
- It punches through CGNAT, and unlike Plex's relay it usually establishes a direct connection, so you get full speed for video.

ZeroTier works the same way if you prefer it. If you'd rather have a real public URL, a cheap VPS with WireGuard and a reverse proxy will do it for a few pounds a month. I'd avoid Cloudflare Tunnel — their terms prohibit video streaming on the free tier.

One thing to be aware of: anyone you want to share the server with will also need Tailscale installed and an invite to your network. Fine for family, less convenient for wider sharing.

Also worth checking whether Three gives your router an IPv6 address. If it does, and the network you're connecting from also has IPv6, you could open the port on the router's IPv6 firewall and reach the server directly. It depends on both ends supporting it, so it's not guaranteed, but it costs nothing to check.