Intermittent connectivity issues with Roon ARC on office WiFi (ref#IT2RLX)

Support
1

Hi! What’s not quite right with Roon?

· Can’t reach my Server, remotes or ARC

Can’t connect to my Server, remotes or ARC

· Other ARC issues

Tell us what's going on

· ARC works intermittently, does fine on my phone usually, at my office on WiFi it stops, sends “poor communication “ message, and a lot of the time won’t play at all. All my other streaming service work fine, strong WiFi signal

Tell us about your home network

· Spectrum….about.t a year old, I’m not there now so can’t tell you

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Hey @Paul_Schulten,

Thanks for writing in and for sharing your report! Sorry to hear about your poor connection issues via Arc.

It is common for Spotify, YouTube, or Netflix to work perfectly while Roon ARC struggles. Standard streaming services use CDNs, meaning the music is coming from a server very close to your office.

In contrast, Roon ARC is a peer-to-peer connection. You are streaming directly from your home computer/server. This makes the connection much more sensitive to:

  1. Corporate Firewalls: Office networks often have "Deep Packet Inspection" that identifies long-lived, high-bandwidth streams and kills them.
  2. MTU/Packet Fragmentation: If the office network handles data packets differently than your home ISP, the packets can "break," leading to that "Partial File" error.
The logs show ARC trying to pull a full stream that gets cut off. Lowering the bandwidth requirements can sometimes "sneak" the data through restrictive firewalls.
  • In the ARC app, go to Settings > Playback.
  • Under Cellular and WiFi, change the quality to Balanced or Bandwidth Optimized.
  • Why this helps: Smaller data chunks are less likely to trigger a "timeout" or "read failure" on a corporate network.

Thanks, Paul!

3

Hi @Paul_Schulten,

A few quick questions. Do you encounter this issue if you rely on cellular data at the same location?

Do you rely on Tailscale for Roon ARC, or did you set up port forwarding in Roon under Settings → ARC? The latter configures automatically; the former would have required you to download a separate application (Tailscale).

It’s common for enterprise WiFi networks to interfere with ARC’s peer-to-peer connection. While we usually recommend Tailscale as a port forwarding alternative, but it might also help in this case. Even when connected to work WiFi, ARC would instead rely on the proxy-mesh connection that Tailscale creates with your home server.

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I do not use tailscale. I will try turning off my celluar to see if that helps. Really lost with all this tech stuff and what a hassle Roon is after it being so expensive. I just want to talk to somebody and work through this!

5

Ok went back out and tried turning cellular on/off as well as WiFi on/off. I used to be able to listen a little bit, but now not at all. I really like Roon for the high def music, but this is getting old! I’m probably going to have to pay someone to fix this for me, just like I had to do to get ARC working at all. More $$$$, not happy.

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Looking at my phone on ARC app, there is a white band across the bottom that says “unauthorized “. Can somebody tell me how to make this thing work?

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Hi @Paul_Schulten,

Are you attempting to connect to the same Roon Server? Or, do you have multiple servers?

Just to triple confirm, did you specifically test out attempting to connect with Arc while only using cellular data?

From your description, it sounds like you’re relying on your routers UPnP, you haven’t set any manual port forwarding rules yourself, have you?

The best next step here would be for you to review your Roon Settings > Roon Arc at the time of your Arc issue to review for any error codes.

As @connor has mentioned, it’s common for enterprise WiFi networks to interfere with ARC’s peer-to-peer connection. Tailscale would likely be the best option if you’re navigating across enterprise networks. :folded_hands:

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Hi @Paul_Schulten,

How are things performing on the most recent release?

What do you see in ARC Settings under cloud/server connectivity when you are connected to the enterprise WiFi at the office?

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