> It relies on their hosted services/infrastructure.
Only if you want it to. Your local Plex server is always available on port 32400 - which can be opened up for others as well. But using Plex’s authentication is more convenient, of course.
Yeah, I was specifically talking about the "firewall" bypassing the parent mentioned (most likely combined with NAT punch-through as well). You could of course use Plex without that and use wireguard (or just make it available to the internet) and not rely on their infra.
Only if you want it to. Your local Plex server is always available on port 32400 - which can be opened up for others as well. But using Plex’s authentication is more convenient, of course.