Roon Server Version 2.0 (Build 1432) Production
Mac Studio 2022, Apple M1 Ultra, Memory 128 GB, macOS Sonoma 14.5.0
Networking Gear & Setup Details
ASUS GT-AXE 16000 Wireless Router, WiFi only, no VPN
Who is your internet service provider? Frontier Communications, Fiber 1 Gig Internet, 1000/1000 Mbps wired speed.
Please list the make and model of your modem and router? ASUS GT-AXE 16000
Do you have any additional network hardware, like additional routers or managed switches? No, only ASUS router.
Does your network have any VPNs, proxy servers, or enterprise-grade security? No VPNs
Connected Audio Devices
RoonARC 1.0 (276) on iPhone 15 Pro using iOS 17.5.1
Description of Issue -
Hello, I am having issues using RoonARC on my iPhone. Specifically, I am finding my music starts playing, then stopping as it buffers to then start playing again. This happens while my iPhone is on cellular but not when connected to WiFi. I have T-Mobile on the 5GUC spectrum, testing out the speed with downloads at 1,467 Mbps and Uploads at 95.4 Mbps. My cellular connection is not being throttled, as my other media services play without interruption. However, on WiFi connection I have no connectivity issues on RoonARC as of yet.
My music library is stored on my MacStudio with the Roon Server installed. They are connected to my ASUS GT-AXE 16000 on wifi only. I have no VPN nor any other network setup. On my ASUS I have Port Forwarding set to 55002 External & Internal Ports using the same IP Address listed in the Roon Server. I have UPnP turned off and IPv6 Disable.
Are there other settings I should note and/or change? Testing my RoonARC says Ready, so it doesn’t appear to be the server issue. My interruption/buffering happens on the cellular network, but this has only happened recently this week. I’ve never had this issue before hand. I suspect it could be the ASUS perhaps slowing down/limiting the bandwidth of Roon, but not sure how to confirm this.
As another T-Mobile user (via Google Fi in my case): their network provisioning and management is very uneven. Speed tests do not tell you the story that matters to ARC, it’s designed to measure bulk bandwidth, which can have temporary hiccups, not streaming, which cannot. Cellular latency can go from decent to terrible in a few minutes, like when a crowd are all using the same cell site (such as in traffic jams). I’ve been able to stream ARC reasonably when driving in the Bay Area, but I don’t even bother trying if I’m stuck in traffic.
Thank you Fernando for the info. I thought so too, that my T-Mobile connection at times could be unstable. I have my RoonARC settings for Playback set to Original Format for both WiFi and Cellular. Most of my music files are AIFF but I do have ALAC, FLAC, AAC, and MP3. I tried experimenting playing other formats since AIFF was initially causing that buffering issues. But even playing the other lossless and lossy file types and it still buffers over Cellular. I have a Qobuz account and when I play music over my Qobuz account on RoonARC there are no issues playing lossless over Cellular whatsoever. I still think my root cause might be my ASUS settings, maybe I have something inadvertently turned on.
Thanks for reaching out with your report. I’ve activated diagnostics mode for your account and I am noticing a few signs of general networking instability at a Roon Server level, it looks like your Mac is sometimes even getting an error fetching the time:
[33990] 07/04 14:30:30 Trace: [realtime] fetching time from NTP server
[33991] 07/04 14:30:30 Trace: [realtime] Got invalid time from NTP: 1/1/1900 12:00:00AM (0ms)
[33992] 07/04 14:30:30 Warn: [realtime] Unexpected error: System.Exception: Got nonsense time from NTP
[33993] at Sooloos.RealTime._FetchTimeFromServer(ResultCallback`1 cb)
As well as authenticating with our servers:
[5038] 07/02 17:19:27 Trace: [devicemap] error updating device map: NetworkTimeout
[5039] 07/02 17:19:32 Warn: [easyhttp] [567] POST https://api.roonlabs.net/accounts5/accounts/3/login web exception without response: socketmsg (TimedOut): Operation timed out (10.0.0.1:443) Operation timed out (10.0.0.1:443)
[5040] 07/02 17:19:32 Warn: [broker/accounts] failed to refresh account info: Result[Status=NetworkError]
[5041] 07/02 17:19:32 Warn: [easyhttp] [570] GET https://api.roonlabs.net/porttest/1/myip web exception without response: socketmsg (TimedOut): Operation timed out (10.0.0.1:443) Operation timed out (10.0.0.1:443)
We have seen users with similar symptoms have a better experience in the past if they change their Router’s DNS servers from the ISP provided ones to Cloudflare DNS, Quad9 or Google DNS. Can you please give this a try and let us know if it helps?
I would also double-check to make sure you haven’t accidentally enabled another network interface on the Mac server
Thank you Noris, I’m not as familiar with assigning servers in my router … I typically leave the default settings albeit it for Port Fowarding for Roon Arc. Would this be the settings I would need to try and reassign the DNS?
On a side note, I restarted my router and that seems to have corrected the issue, but since this has happened before I suspect I’ll run into the same buffering issues again.
All the DNS providers @noris suggested are reputable and as secure as anything on the internet. On my routers (two locations) I set 8.8.8.8 as primary DNS and 1.1.1.1 as secondary (I could also have done it the other way round…) I don’t know if your router allows both primary and secondary DNS servers or just one, but anyway, one of the above will do the job.
@noris , I’ll test this latest settings on my RoonARC using cellular. Please let me know if you see any discrepancies or issues with networking instability on your end when activating the diagnostics mode for my account.
Thank you for your patience. The team has gathered a full diagnostic set from RoonServer and ARC for the last two weeks.
On the ARC side, we do have evidence the app is not behaving as expected given the underlying network conditions. This manifests in page loading failures and interruptions that likely affect ARC’s performance. There’s no evidence this is a port-forwarding-related issue - the two possibilities are latent instability in the cellular network or an issue within RoonServer and ARC’s connectivity mechanism. We’re investigating the second possibility for due diligence.
On the RoonServer side, requests to upstream servers fail frequently or receive unexpected responses. This includes basic RoonServer functions like requesting the date/time. You’ve mentioned you don’t have any network security apparatus beyond the router firewall - do you have any other software capable of monitoring the Mac’s network activity, like third-party antivirus software?
As an immediate troubleshooting step (only if you’re willing to re-download any content you’ve downloaded to the phone) try reinstalling ARC.
We’ll continue to investigate and follow up with our findings.
Thank you Conner for you and your team’s findings and response. That’s curious to hear about the diagnostics results from my Arc usage. Since I made the change to my DNS for the Google Service, my Arc performance in cellular has been pretty great with no buffering issues that I’ve encountered as of yet. I do not believe I have any third-party antivirus software on my Mac computer that contains the RoonServer. And I never made any of those changes on my wireless router. Is there a setting I should check on both my Mac computer and wifi router just to make sure?
I can try reinstalling Arc as well and see how that performs thereafter.
Glad to hear things have improved. Outside of antivirus software or next-generation firewalls that might be capable of application-specific filtering, there’s nothing else within the network itself that is likely to be interfering with ARC in this case. The DNS server is performing address allocation for the third-party services essential to ARC’s functioning on the RoonServer side - this sensitive process was the troubleshooting target.
