When Roon ARC was first announced nearly 2 years ago, I was super excited… but software can be a bitch. Roon ARC was no different. I am of average intelligence but I will keep persisting if I don’t understand something. Just now, 2 years later, I finally got Roon ARC up and running. Wow, what a pain this was. Who in the world is going to access their router settings to enable ARC port forwarding by clicking the UPnP setting? I tried for hours and hours. I crashed my internet. I had to reset my router and change passwords. I was pulling my hair out. If you’re reading this, you’re most likely a techy and you’re wondering, “What’s the problem?” Well, for most people, it’s, “Houston, we have a problem, a big problem.” Yes, it’s a first world problem. We are fortunate to have Roon and Roon ARC but can’t Roon make using their software easier?
Now that Roon ARC is up and running, I’m mesmerized I have access to my entire music library anywhere in the world that has Apple CarPlay. 21st century music playback is a wonder to behold. I wish I could say the same about video streaming content but it’s a mess.
So here’s what I’m left wondering. Why does Roon ARC have a separate app? Why isn’t ARC fully integrated into the Roon app? I understand why port forwarding on a router has the option to be both disabled and enabled. Your router/modem is outside of Roon’s protocol but if access could be made easier, it would be helpful.
Why can’t Roon, in its own native app, simply have an ARC button? Click on it and you can now stream Roon anywhere? Am I naive? To have two apps, one for Roon and another for Roon ARC seems unnecessarily complicated.
However, this in itself wouldn’t simplify the port forwarding at all. There needs to be a way from the internet through your router to the Roon server. Port forwarding provides this and this wouldn’t change just by unifying ARC and the main app.
This would be possible by having a completely different architecture to replace the port forwarding solution. Much more would have to go through Roon‘s cloud servers. It’s possible in principle and would simplify setup. But this would just as well be possible with a separate ARC app and it’s a completely different issue than app unification.
I’ve moved the topic to Feedback so that Roon staff sees it, because it seems more like you want to give feedback rather than discuss with other Roon users.
Agreed. There are effectively only three ways to avoid the need for port forwarding.
Use a VPN to make the remote device look to the server as if it is on the same network. This is what the now supported Tailscale solution does - but, like port forwarding, it is not without it’s own learning curve.
Change the architecture so that Cloud servers are involved in the streaming by creating a tunnel that both ends connect to and through which all (remote) streaming/downloading traffic would flow.
Adopt IPv6 everywhere.
None of these come for free (in effort terms).
The second solution, if it were done, would allow both the Roon Server in your home and your Roon ARC device to log into the cloud server which would then be able relay the streaming data. No port forwarding would be required. But, this solution would require the provision of enough server capacity (and network capactity to those servers) to support the remote streaming of the entire Roon user base without causing a bottleneck and associated audio hiccups and would thus would incur a cost far beyond that that is tenable for a small company like Roon - at least without increasing the subscrition charges significantly [Yes - I know Roon is part of Harman (which is a much bigger company) and Harman is itself part of Samsung (which is a huge company) but neither Harman or Samsung would be likely to be as interested in Roon if it was encumbered with a much larger infrastructure requirement and its associated higher ongoing costs].
IPv6 is not a solution for two reasons:
It is not universally available - for example, in the UK, mobile services are almost universally IPv4 only so IPv6 can’t be used.
In order to provide the kind of security that people require, and which comes free, in part, because of IPv4 NAT, your IPv6 enabled router has to provide a firewall. Thus, to provide access to your (Roon) server, you must open a hole in your firewall. Configuring that firewall hole, funnily enough, often looks very much like configuring port forwarding on IPv4 - so IPv6 really does not provide an ease of use advantage.
For IPv4, port forwarding is the solution used whenever a device on a local IPv4 network needs to provide a Server (not just Roon Servers - any server - e.g a web server) to the internet at large and, in so doing transit across an IPv4 NAT boundary.
One thing’s for sure. I’m glad I started this topic. I was about to let it slide as it required multiple Advils to get this point. I don’t know if my frustrations would be heard or if any of you thought there was a more efficient way to integrate Roon streaming across all devices and platforms other than home WIFI. As of now, I bet that not many people are using Roon ARC because of the complicated setup. Hopefully this will change in the future. Your responses have been educational so far and holds up a magnifying glass up to where Roon is currently and where it may go in the future. Thank you.
In the 1970s, Dieter Rams, the industrial designer, infamously proclaimed 10 principles of good design. These principles are just as important in software design too: