Can I Run Roon ARC on Two Different Roon Servers At The Same Time [YES]

Roon Software Discussion ARC
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Can you run tailscale as your Roon ARC solution while still having your router port forwarding setup for the traditional Roon ARC? Here’s why I ask. This is something I just thought of.

I have two always on Roon servers, each with it’s own Roon subscription. They are a Roon Nucleus (Rev B) and a Mac Mini (late 2014) with upgraded SSD. Currently, I don’t use Tailscale. I run Roon ARC on my Nucleus with port forwarding on my U-Verse fiber internet router. It all works great. The reason I have two Roon servers in not germane to this question.

I normally run Roon ARC on my iPhone 13 Pro Max, but sometimes use the iPad Mini 6 or iPad Gen 10. Roon ARC works well on all three.

OK, here’s my question. While maintaining my current Roon ARC setup on the Nucleus, U-Verse router (port forwarding), and iPhone 13 Pro Max, could I set up a second Roon ARC situation using my Mac Mini Roon server, Tailscale, and one of the iPads pointing at the Mac Mini, not the Nucleus?

The only reason I ask this is I already have both of the servers always running and active, so it would simply be creating a backup Roon ARC situation just by installing Tailscale on the Mac Mini Roon server and an iPad. If my Nucleus ever fails while I am away from home, the Mac Mini Roon ARC would be available using the iPad.

In simple terms, I think the question is can a router work with Tailscale while still having the port forwarding. I would never want to run both at the same time. (Or, would I?)

And, as you can tell, I know nothing about Tailscale. Maybe Tailscale, by itself, can somehow do this.

EDIT: In case someone is wondering, my U-Verse router would not allow me to port forward two different Roon ARC setups at once.

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Not sure why you would want both, You can but there really is no reason to. The point of Tailscale is to access devices with no configuration to your security settings on your router. It’s a virtual network of as many devices you want to be interconnected.

Any device can be added to Tailscale and you can enable or disable it on those other devices at will or not have it at all and it will fall back to using whatever method you have setup on your router. Tailscale has nothing to do with your router at all.

You run Tailscale on any device you want to access from outside your network. You setup a Tailscale account which creates your Tailscale virtual network in the cloud. You install Tailscale on each device you want to access. In the Tailscale configuration page for your account you will see any devices running Tailscale using your account credentials here you authorise them to be on your network . There are lots of other things you can do like create subnets etc if you wish. Basic setup you just add them.

They are now on your Tailscale network and can see and access any other device you have allowed on your network. Disable Tailscale on a device it no longer uses it to connect.

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There is one question that you may be able to answer already. If you install ARC an a new device and try to establish a connection to your server, it will see both servers on the network. Does ARC then provide you with the list of servers to connect to in the same way as thenormal Roon client does?

If so, I would imagine that everything should be OK. However, if this works have you tried setting the ARC port on each server to different ports and then setting up port forwarding for both ports?

The use of port forwarding on one Roon server and phone and tailscale on a different roon server and a different phone should work fine from a networking point of view.

However, I’m not sure how the Roon Cloud servers that ARC uses would cope if both servers are run with the same account. I would hope that it would be OK but I could forsee potential issues if they have not been considered beforehand.

It should be possible to conduct the experiment yourself:

  • Setup Tailscale on the Mac Mini
  • Check that the port forwarding connection to the Nucleus still works on the iPhone (I can’t imagine that this would fail).
  • install and configure Tailscale on the iPad
  • Check that the port forwarding still works on the iPhone (Again, I can’t imagine that this would fail).
  • Check that ARC works on the iPad/Mac Mini combination using Tailscale.

I can’t see that doing this would cause the existing port forwarding setup to fail. If any of the check steps fail simply uninstall Tailscale from the Mac Mini and you should be back to your previous state.

It may also be worth checking to see how it all behaves when connected to your local network as well.

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I think I am not understanding the problem. Your Roon server listens on a (user-selected) port for ARC. Your U-Verse router port-forwards connections on the chosen port from the internet to the Roon server on your LAN.

Obviously, you can’t forward the same port to two different Roon servers on your LAN (how would your router know which packet to forward to which Roon server?). But you could have Roon server A listen on 38192 and Roon server B listen on 48192, and configure your U-Verse router to forward connections on the respective ports to the respective Roon servers.

That much seems straightforward. What I don’t understand is where Tailscale enters the picture. Why are you configuring a VPN and what will it do?

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I think this all boils down to the way that the Roon cloud servers cope with two or more Roon Server using subscriptions on the same user account.

If each server used a subscription on a separate Roon account, then port forwarding using different port numbers would obviously work.

In this respect, @Jim_F may be better placed than many of us to answer because he is one of what is probably a small subset of users that run multiple servers concurrently with subscriptions on the same Roon account.

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Thanks for your responses. I think this will work except for another issue I just thought of that of that may or may not matter.

I use Splashtop for remote connection and control of the Mac Mini Roon server. When I activate Tailscale, it will use a different IP address for connection. Will that disconnect Splashtop or can a single device have two IP’s on two networks? I realize I will control Roon ARC with the iPad, but I might still want control of the Mac Mini using Splashtop, but maybe not.

It’s one Roon account with two lifetime subscriptions, both always authorized. That should not be an issue. I’m running and using three Roon servers on three subscriptions as we speak. My port forwarding limitation is a U-Verse router restriction (I think).

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Don’t anyone waste more time on this. It’s just something that occurred to me and the incremental cost is $ zero. I’ll give it a try.

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You access devices using its Tailscale ip address it gets assigned or if you have Magicdns active the name of the device. You can cut and paste IPs for device from the Tailscale widget if you can’t remember them.

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If tailscale assigns the IP addresses, are they maintained the same if I turn off tailscale until/unless I need it (probably never)? I want to continue using the iPad Mini 6 on my local Roon system as a control/display. I wouldn’t want tailscale to assign a different IP everytime I turn it on.

EDIT: Thanks for all the input. Lucy the Schnauzer and I are heading to bed. It’s 3:20 am here.

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I already tried the two different port forwarding rules, one for each Roon server, but the U-Verse router said it’s not allowed to forward the same app to two different destinations or some such message.

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its a fixed IP for as long as its a device that has connected to you Tailscale network. If you turn it off and then on it will always be same IP unless you delete it from your Tailscale Network and add it again as a new device.

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Is this an ‘app’ that you have defined (and named) on the router in order to support Roon ARC? I have seen some routers where your have to define a service (or app) by specifying a connection type (TCP, UDP, both) and a port or port range and then defining a rule to forward that app to a device. If this is the way that your U-Verse router works, can you not just create a different ‘App’ using a different port and then forward that different app to the second Roon server?

E.G. Roon Server 1 connects ARC on port 55000, Roon Server 2 connects ARC on port 60000

On the Router, create an ARC1 app that handles TCP connections on Port 55000 and an ARC2 app that handles TCP connections on Port 60000.

Then create a forwarding Rule to forward ARC1 to Roon Server 1, and another forwarding Rule to forward ARC2 to Roon Server 2.

I doubt very much that the router actually cares about and thus compares the content of the TCP streams to the two servers.

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It’s when I used RoonARC as the name I assigned to the port forwarding rule. Maybe I should try a different name for the second, such as RoonARC(2).

Another thing, I just remembered. That was with my older U-Verse router before fiber. Maybe the new router will allow it. I’ll give it a try before fooling with Tailscale.

Thanks guys.

EDIT: On second thought, I think installing free Tailscale will be the easier method. I’m going to try that first.

And, to answer a question from above, if the Roon ARC app on iPad can’t see and choose which Roon server to connect to, I’ll shut down the Nucleus long enough to install Roon ARC on my iPad Mini 6 and set it up with Mac Mini. I won’t be switching it around after the initial install.

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I got it working. Roon ARC just finished syncing to my Mac Mini Roon server using Tailscale. My other Roon ARC is working with my Nucleus connected via port forwarding.

And, if I didn’t already say this, when I deleted and reinstalled Roon ARC on my iPad Mini 6, it showed both Roon servers and I was able to choose the one I wanted to use.

As an aside, I was able to do this from NC using Splashtop to connect to my Roon system in Atlanta. I really like that Splashtop app for remoting into Roon via the Mac Mini.

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EDIT: So, in summary, this does work, but the only reason to do it is if your first Roon ARC setup fails for some reason, you have this backup system available. If the Nucleus fails or loses connection to Tidal and/or Qobuz, presumably the Mac Mini would still be working and connected. That said, the reason I added the Mac Mini ($200) a year ago is to remotely reboot and reconnect the Nucleus if necessary. This is a belt and suspenders solution.

And, I’m not saying using port forwarding on one and Tailscale on the other is the best way to do it. I did it that way because I already was using port forwarding and wanted to try Tailscale. That’s all.

And, just to be clear, you wouldn’t need two Roon subscriptions to do this. You would simply authorize your second Roon server when/if the first one failed.

Thanks @CrystalGipsy and @Wade_Oram for your help with this.

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Glad it all worked out.

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This is working well. I like using the iPad Mini 6 better than the iPhone. My FiiO KA1 died, so I threw it away and am using DragonFly Cobalt which limits to 96 KHz, but it does render MQA. My little Mac Mini (late 2014) is not missing a beat using Tailscale.

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