Sorry for late reply and thanks for yours. If roon can pay me with a few months subscription for free, I shall gladly help them investigate this bug, rethorically speaking. Roon is a commercial product, but it is not yet mature enough to work across a private home network consisting of devices from MS, Apple, Android-related-companies, etc. This is very dissapointing.
I restarted the Mac server today and then I need to go into the network folder 3 times before it started to recognize the devices on the network (from the operating system level), among them the Win10 machine I am writing on now. This machine may in reciprokal also work on the MacBook pro folders. The machines work as wireless harddrives for each other.
The thing is, that if the Windows Firewall detects abnormal activity, something that is of course completely nutty since roon after all was installed from an authenticated user, then Windows will rescue its own embarrassment by asking for manual confirmation whether to allow the app to work online, or not. This does not happen. Also, there is no report from roon that there is any kind of firewall trouble, and this should indeed be expected to happen were it the case.
It is not helpful to turn off the firewall.
Roon has a major problem in that there is no emergency button for this situation, the only option is to write an IP address manually. I expect a helpful procedure, for example that roon displays which devices on the network it can actually see. There is no “try again”, nothing that can assist the user in distress.
I am able to connect from another Win10 pc, (but only after I restarted the Mac server, which was indeed restarted to check this).
Roon on THIS win10 pc can see the other win10 pc and roon offers to make that a server, but it still cannot see the Mac. I anticipate that I can come back later, after a restart here and a restart there, and report that now all pc’s may connect to the Mac roon server (or core as it is called now).
This is my point, I need to do all sorts of funny walks and spend a LOT of time to keep 3-4 PCs connected in the roon context, even if these PCs are (for the time being) always connected. The family use pc x as server for picture library, and this is used as screensaver on the kitchen for all to watch, etc. IOW, there are no problems on the network except roon, and except the wave of post-steve-jobs security paranoia that has struck the whole of Apple and is causing a severe downgrade of their system.
I will report back when the problem is solved.