I am currently trying out Roon and I love it so far. Unfortunately, I hit a huge issue yesterday and I haven’t found anyway to overcome it: my ARC app on my phone won’t connect to my Room server anymore when I am outside my home network.
It worked perfectly fine for several days, but suddenly it stopped working. Here is what I double checked: - My port forwarding is setup correctly. (And I redid it and tried again with a different port just to be sure. Also, the forwarding is a manual rule, UPnP is turned off. ) - My Roon server ip is static and hasn’t changed. - There are no changes in my firewall. - In my Roon server’s config, Roon server says it’s ready and working (see second screenshot. I took it from my Roon Remote on my phone, but it’s the same on my server directly, I double checked) - The connection to Roon cloud is fine, but it says the server can’t be reached. (See first screenshot. The server is ready, if I switch to my home network, it works) - It was working on my mobile network before perfectly. I used it with Car Play several times. - I restarted my server (Roon and the physical machine). - I reinstalled ARC from scratch on my iPhone (15 pro max with the latest iOS version).
I am a bit at a loss here. I checked the doc and the forums, but couldn’t find anything that helped.
Is there anything you think of that could be the issue? (I am a developer and I don’t fear technical steps or solutions if needed). I really like Roon, but ARC is essential to my use case and I would really like to find a solution.
Note: I first sent this support request by email and they told me to post it here. Since then, I found a workaround by using Tailscape VPN to connect my iPhone and my Roon Server. However, it is not an ideal solution for me and I would really like a better solution. It worked before, so I am sure there is a way to fix the issue.
Describe your network setup
My Roon server is on a Windows machined plugged directly into my Bell Gigabit router. UPnP is disabled and I setup a manual port forwarding. My Roon server has a static ip. I checked the troubleshooting post for Bell routers in the documentation, but it didn't help.
If you are using Bell Wireless Home Internet, this service uses CG-NAT - however, since you state that it used to work, this is unlikely.
Is it possible that your internet service has been migrated to CG-NAT recently?
I have seen reports that there are issues with the Bell supplied routers with respect to port forwarding. Has your router recently had a firmware upgrade that may have caused the issue?
The first two relate to the posibility that you are on, or have been migrated to, as service that utilises CG-NAT to supply an IPv4 address. CG-NAT is fundamentally incompatible with port forwarding.
You can tell wether or not you are on a CG-NAT service by comparing the WAN side ip address of your router (not the 192.168.2… LAN side address) with the ip address that you see when you visit a web site (with tailscale or any other VPN disabled) that reports the ip address from which the connection was made - like whatismyipaddress.com. If the ip addresses match, then your service does not use CG-NAT. If, however, they do not match, then it is likely that your ISP is using CG-NAT and this is what is causing your port forwarding to fail.
If you find that your ISP is using CG-NAT, then your only options are to continue using the Tailscale VPN service as you are currently doing, or to contact your ISP and ask them about options for moving you to a service that supports port forwarding.
Also, I don’t think it is a port forwarding issue. I just tried to set up a simple HTTP server on port 8080, and I was able to access it from outside my home network without any issues (without Tailscape, of course).
Is it possible there is some issue or bug with ARC? If I am able to forward correctly an HTTP server, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work with ARC. Or am I missing something here?
Thanks for taking the time to write in! We were able to take a closer look into your account and see multiple Roon Servers, which could potentially be causing you your issue.
Are you still having issues when using the Mac as your server? I’d be sure to unauthorize and disable the other server, and reset your port forwarding rule to your newer server setup.
I am using my Windows PC as a server. When I started the trial, I briefly installed Roon on my Mac to test it out, but I immediately switched to my Windows PC since it’s a desktop that can stay always on. (When Arc worked outside of my home network, it was by connecting to my Windows. This hasn’t changed since.) I think I unauthorized the server on my Mac, but maybe I messed something up?
In any case, you can disable the non-Windows servers. I use two Mac and an iPhone as a remote for my Windows server and never listened directly from the Windows.
