Port Forwarding on Campus Network

Roon Core Machine

NUC 7i5BNH with ROCK

Networking Gear & Setup Details

Campus Network provided by a central server and switch.
TPLink Deco m5 mesh router is used as access points.

Connected Audio Devices

dCS Bartok network DAC

Number of Tracks in Library

60000

Description of Issue

I am on campus network with central server and switch. My house is basically under a subnet with DHCP control by the switch. The mesh router is used as access points. My ROCK core and network DAC are connected to the LAN port with dynamic IP allocated by the central switch.

Here is the error message I get:
{
“connectivity”: {“status”:“NetworkError”,“status_code”:504,“error”:“error: Error: ETIMEDOUT, response code: undefined, body: undefined connected? undefined”},
“external_ip”: {“actual_external_ip”:“109.171.xxx.xxx”,“router_external_ip”:null},
“natpmp_autoconfig”: {“status”:“NotFound”},
“upnp_autoconfig”: {“status”:“NotFound”}
}

It looks like my campus network does not allow port forwarding. Am I then out of luck? What exactly should I ask the admin to do for me?

Or is it something that I can set up on my mesh access point? The Deco app doesn’t show any settings to change the port forwarding option.

I don’t think you’re going to get that working. You’d need a VPN, like Tailscale - a use case that generally works but I guess isn’t officially supported. Hopefully they see the value in officially supporting it.

In those days where organisations, big or small, need to protect themselves against malevolent attacks against their networks, it would be foolish and non professional for a sys admin to let users configure ports on the organisation switches/routers to give access to personal computer equipment from the outside.

As a sysadmin in a previous life inside a governemental organisation, I would never allow that.

Not sure if Roon ARC is secure even for a home network. I would appreciate if Roon staff could comment on that.

Thanks. I also thought so, but first I needed to understand what port forwarding means and who has the right to do so.

Port forwarding is a mechanism by which requests to a public IP (what you see when you go to whatismyip.com) get forwarded to a computer on a private network (i.e. your computer).

The network admins have authority to do so.

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