I got Roon over OpenVPN working

Tinkering
1

My aim was to use the Roon Core in our home while on vacation in our holiday house. I got this working with the following setup:

Home

  • Roon Core running on a Synology Nas
  • OpenVPN server running on a Raspberry Pi
  • Router with DD-WRT

Holiday house

  • Roon Bridge running on a Raspberry Pi that also runs a OpenVPN Client

After setting up the OpenVPN server and client it is vital that clients can reach other machines on the server network and the other way around. The way to do that is explained on the OpenVPN website:

Expanding the scope of the VPN to include additional machines on either the client or server subnet.

Basically it means that you have to advertise the server subnet to the clients with a push command in the OpenVPN server config file. Secondly, you have to add a static route in the router on the server network that routes the VPN client subnet to the OpenVPN server.

Machines in both subnets are now able to see each other.

Make sure to enable ip forwarding on the OpenVPN server too.

I get good results and a stable connection with this method.

4 Likes
2

Hi Pieter,
This is the one thing I would like to do: be able to sue my Roon server when in my vacation house.
At home, Roon server is running on its dedicated PC, delivering to several endpoints: a WiiM amp, one airport express, two AppleTVs. Music is stored on a Synology NAS.
At the vacation house, there is a PC, a nother WiiM amp and two AppleTVs.
Do you think I could replicate/adapt your settings ? Where should I start for a good setting up guide ? (I am not that good with networks, and failed trying doing the trick with Tailscale).
Thanks,
Thierry

3

Happy to share my settings. But you need at least a OpenVPN server in your house and a OpenVPN client in your vacation house to get this working. You could use the Synology Nas to run a OpenVPN server and a Roon Core. I used this setup for awhile and it worked too, but I had problems with Roon ARC and it looked like the Synology VPN server was the problem.

4

Thanks for this. I will try and install open vpn (probably on the server PC) and also on the PC at the vacation place. I will let you know how it progresses.
T

5

I’ve got Roon ARC fine with OpenVPN. OpenVPN installed on my Synology NAS with clients on windows laptop, ipad, android tablet and phone. Mitigates the need to open ports on router.

6

I recently changed my setup. I now have a R7800 router running OpenWRT and use Roon Rock as server. The router runs OpenVPN and using the steps in my post above didn’t work directly, the Roon server couldn’t discover the Roon Bridge on the VPN subnet. Adding udp multicast forwarding (port 9003) using the package udp-broadcast-relay-redux on the OpenWRT router fixed this.

7

well, you still need to open a port for OpenVPN, no different than my setup

8

Wow, @Pieter_Stenekes that’s fabulous. You don’t have any issue with passing mDNS across VLANs? The whole udp-proxy-2020 product has been very helpful but complicated to set up for many of those of us who are trying to do this with different router set-ups (I have Unifi UDM-Pro’s in both homes). No knock on Aaron - he’s a genius, I’m just not a networking genius.

I do have a Synology NAS, and could run off of that instead of my NUC if it allowed me to get this working (ie if OpenVPN was the key). Thanks!

9

It is not only the OpenVPN that is the key here, but you need to make sure that multicast forwarding is in place.

However, in my original setup, I used a Synology Nas with OpenVPN and it also served as a Roon Server. It worked without any adjustments, except I had to enable “allow clients to access server’s lan”. Maybe this setting also forward multicast packages, I don’t know. It worked, but it interfered with the Roon ARC connection.

The second setup with the Roon Server still on the Nas and a Raspberry Pi as OpenVPN server worked but i had to make sure that both sides could see each other by means of a static route and a push command.

The third setup is what I use now with a Roon Rock as server and OpenVPN on the router. I had to add multicast forwarding to get it to work but it is actually not that hard on a OpenWRT router.

10

Got, it, very helpful - thanks Peter.

So, since I’m bought in on Ubiquiti / UniFi, I really need to get UDP Proxy 2020 working, that’s the deal! I did manage to get it going in one direction, now I need it to work in the other :slight_smile:

11

I changed from OpenVPN to Wireguard VPN and it still works. Data rate is 4x higher than with OpenVPN.