I recently set up a intel NUC with ROCK as my Roon core. Primarily so I could access my library while abroad. I had it up and running for a week before my trip and ARC was working flawlessly while out of the house. Even listened to music on the way to the airport. But as soon as I landed at my first stop over I was unable to connect. Thought it was maybe a bandwith issue as it was using free wifi but now I’m at my final destination on a solid wifi I am still unable to connect.
Roon ARC 1.63.344
Internet that the ROCK is connected to is a Fritzbox router, Germany. I manually set up port forwarding following these instructions and it was working without issue in Germany for a week
Now overseas…
On my IPad it constantly changing between
Roon Optimized Core Kit Last seen less then a minute ago
to Online And Ready
But when I hit connect it try’s for a minute before I get the error message
It seems that there is a Port Forwarding issue but as I said, worked fine in Germany.
My partner is at home but not tech savvy. I got her to switch the NUC on and off to see if that helped but this didn’t change the status. She check ARC settings
If you’re using public Wi-Fi at your destination, rather thag cellular data, you may find that this is blocking the streaming service and/or ARC.
However, if ROCK was turned off and was last seen a day ago, it may not be powered on now. Can your partner check this using the Roon app or a web browser from inside the home?
Also, if you use Qobuz or TIDAL, does this work in your current location?
Thanks for your response. I’m using the Wi-Fi of home internet, not public. Don’t have a sim card yet but will get one today.
The Rock was turned of and on again. Roon is up and running. My partner just checked ARC in Roon settings and status say “Ready”. I updated the original post with the screenshot.
I don’t have Qobuz or TIDAL but bandcamp and all other apps are working as usual.
Okay, if you’re using a home internet connection, I’m thinking that the firewall may block all outbound ports except 80, 443 etc. This is unusual for home networks, so it could be the ISP blocking high ports.
You could try using a movile VPN app to bypass this, e.g. Proton VPN.
You must be right. I got a local sim card and ARC is working on it! Which is great. Is there any reason an ISP would block the ARC connection and what is the workaround? The VPN didn’t seem to help.
Someone with with more network knowledge will probably need to interject here. I think there are a couple of possibilities.
Port 55000 is blocked by the ISP, but this should have been resolved using a VPN
The ISP proxies DNS requests, i.e, TCP/UDP 53, which may also affect the VPN (IDK if changing DNS servers to, for example 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1, would circumvent this–@ipeverywhere may provide some insight?)
Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do remotely. When you return home you may want to experiment with Tailscale.
If you’re using metered cellular, make sure you adjust the Playback preferences.
I’ve had mixed results with VPNs and ARC. So much so, and I used to document this, I’ve given up because it’s just too inconsistent and doesn’t seem to be a priority for Roon to keep it working.
The ARC → Roon connection is basically a web server connection but it occurs at a non-common port. Public wifi may block these non-common things thinking that it provides additional security. For a completely unrelated project, I have been known to put custom things on known ports to workaround this problem. However, Roon limits what ports you can use and blocks the use of the most well known ports.
It could simply be the public wifi you’re using is blocking unknown traffic by port. Detecting / verifying this is probably more work than its worth. Moving your Roon ARC port to something more well known I’m not even going to suggest here publicly as it has some drawbacks that should be understood before committing to that as solution.
The SIM card may be the right solution here as that won’t block where you’re trying to get to (ARC). Realize in some countries this can be a significant added expense.
The Roon recommended deployment of Tailscale would solve this issue. The connection between client and server to establish the VPN looks like web traffic. But more importantly, uses standard web ports so a simple public wifi trying to block traffic that isn’t web by port won’t know your Tailscale isn’t web and will pass the connection. Since this is so well documented now and supported by Roon I would suggest spending time on enabling this for future travel.
