· I'm sorry to be reaching out over this but I can't dig into whats going on myself to work it out.
Roon ROCK with tailscale. iPhone 17 with tailscale. Bot hhconnected working well, appear in Tailscale web UI. iOS can ping roon no worries. Roon works flawlesly at home and at home on Arc.
On 5G full cell reception (600+mbps speed tests) arc connects (double green lights - cloud and roon server)) no worries - loads new albums, playlist changes artwork - but wont stream anything not pre-dowenloaded - "poor connection"
I have deleted and redownloaded arc, tried subnet routing rather than the tailscale on Roon ROCKL (which needs version an update btw).
No success
I wish I could get in and manipuilate the IP its trying to use to access Roon via tailscale - or troubleshoot further but alas
what can I do to help you guys work out what my issue is?
Tell us about your home network
· 1Gb fiber - public IP (dont want to expose a port). No ISP router just a UniFi Fiber Gateway. Use tailscale for streaming media from home on other apps - works flawlessly throughout - not an issue.
Thank you for your report. We’ve taken a look at ARC logs to try to pinpoint what’s going on.
It’s normal to experience some latency in the Tailscale connection, but consistent failures from the ARC framework despite a clean connection on the phone points to a probable routing problem between ROCK and ARC. Logs seem to corroborate that almost nothing is getting through: we see basic HTTP requests failing alongside the timeouts for track playback.
Some of these requests are passing through the ROCK’s publicly routable IPv6 address instead of the Tailscale interface. If ARC is still attempting to communicate with your server via an IPv6 address that hasn’t been pinholed, the Unifi firewall will be filtering out and blocking this traffic.
We’d like to request a quick test before we escalate this to Devs:
In UniFi, go to Settings → Networks → your LAN, find the IPv6 settings, and set the IPv6 Interface Type to Disabled.
Restart ROCK. Turn on Tailscale on the phone.
Open Roon → Settings → Roon ARC and see if you can stream any tracks on cellular data with Tailscale connected
Test playback on 5G.
Let us know if this changes any of the behavior you’re seeing. Thank you!
A brief note concerning the Tailscale version in RoonOS: the team reviews each Tailscale release and updates as necessary to retain parity with essential features. The most recent Tailscale release did not affect RoonOS; you can disregard the update notification.
@connor thank you for time taken to look at this for me and in consideration of my speciifc setup!
Very glad you mention IPv6. I had already turned IPv6 off during those test I sent you (I was concerned about it causing issues!) but it was in use previously so that expalins what you were seeing.
To confirm - Roon currently has no IPv6 address
Confirm IPv6 completely disabled on LAN.
Reboot Roon, reboot router, reboot iPhone.
Confirm no IPv6 address given to Roon
Off wifi → onto 5G and Tailscale and then fire up Roon Arc
Lets me know what else I might be able to try!
thank you agin for the help
Thanks for the update! From the looks of it, in your 3rd image, you’re pinging 10.0.0.41 which is a private LAN IP, not a Tailscale IP (which would be 100.x.x.x).
This means ARC is routing through your LAN address rather than the Tailscale tunnel when you’re on 5G. That traffic can’t reach your home network from outside, which is exactly why streaming fails while the control handshake (which goes via cloud) still shows green.
Can you check your Tailscale IP for the server On the Tailscale admin console or the app? Then ping that address from your iPhone on 5G — does it respond?
It is great news that the ping to the Tailscale IP (100.x.x.x) is responding correctly while you are on 5G. This confirms that the tunnel itself is up and the basic routing is functional.
The fact that metadata (artwork/lists) loads but streaming fails with a “Poor Connection” error suggests that the low-bandwidth control traffic is getting through, but the high-bandwidth audio stream is being choked or blocked.
To isolate this further, we’d like you to try one specific test:
If possible, please connect your iPhone to a different Wi-Fi network (like at a friend’s house or a coffee shop) and keep Tailscale active.
Does Roon ARC stream correctly in this scenario?
If it works on external Wi-Fi but fails on 5G, we can narrow the culprit down to your mobile carrier’s handling of the connection.
Tailscale is built on the WireGuard protocol, which relies entirely on UDP traffic.
While pings (ICMP) and metadata sync (HTTP) are very lightweight, streaming high-quality audio generates a continuous, heavy stream of UDP packets.
Some mobile carriers are aggressive with their “Traffic Management” policies. When they detect a heavy, sustained UDP stream, they may identify it as potential “garbage” traffic or a security risk and throttle it severely. This would trigger the “Poor Connection” warning in ARC even if your raw 5G speed tests look amazing.
Perform the External Wi-Fi test mentioned above and let us know the results.
Check Tailscale “Derp” Status: In your Tailscale app or admin console, check if your connection is “Direct” or “Relayed” (DERP) when you are on 5G. A relayed connection through a DERP node can significantly limit bandwidth and increase latency, which often breaks ARC streaming.
We’re looking forward to hearing if a different network environment changes the behavior!
