Hi… Not sure if this is a serious problem. But an observation worth sharing maybe.
I have a UNIFI network with multiple VLANS. My Roon Core and end points (Blue Sound, Sonos, Ropiee etc) are all on the same “IoT” style VLAN.
The issue I have is if I open Roon on my phone or desktop that is on the main (separate) VLAN, I can’t use these two devices as an end point. Well not all the time. Sometime my desktop or phone shows up as an end point option and works fine. Some other times not. Which contradicts some of the other articles I have read on the forums about VLAN’s not being compatible with Roon.
All devices no matter what VLAN they are on work fine as a Roon remote. The issue is the end point if they are on a separate VLAN.
I have various unifi “Lan-in” firewall rules so that the Roon Core can see all the VLAN’s / devices. Based on my limited understanding of the rules anyway.
Just curious if anyone else has had similar experiences or a fix.
The fact that it works sometimes does not contradict that Roon is not compatible. It means that is does not work all of the time and therefore is not compatible.
Different VLANs are different subnets. Roon does not support multiple subnets. This is cleary specified in their Networking Best Practices article. (Section "Avoiding Common Network Troubles)
You will not get support from Roon on this, but may find help in the Tinkering section of the community. Doing a search on VLANs there is probably also a good place to start.
Fair enough… I guess if it isn’t supported it isn’t supported. For mobile devices it is easy enough to switch SSD’s to bring them up as an endpoint on the core. Its not the most seamless or elegant solution. But not the end of the world.
I have looked at some UNFI + VLAN posts in the tinkering section and its is pretty advanced networking with a reasonable chunk of constant maintenance. Which is way more effort than needed I think. And these things go wrong with an update or a tinker with another device all the time. Which means you end up spending half the day trouble shooting why custom setup isn’t working instead of actually enjoying the service or music collection!
I’m only using my mobile devices as remotes. I have dedicated enpoints throughout the house. Of course if you have a big house and want to use a mobile device with headphones so you can move around that is not an option. Maybe an old mobile device, dedicated to Roon could serve that purpose?
Remotes can work but not for audio. Roon uses different methods of discovery for endpoints and remotes and they don’t support subnets at all but it can work in some situations but is unsupported. Remotes seems to be able to traverse subnets on a UniFi network as does discovery of Airplay and Chromecast as endpoints as they use mDNS multicast that can be forwarded or repeated as long as mdns service setting in active on the router then any vlan on same corporate network setup will be able to access the core unless blocked.
However as Roon only audio devices including the audio output on remotes rely on traditional UDP and I think SSDP that are not traversed without making them so with a lot of hard work so you can’t see them as an audio zone. Saying that my work Mac which is on my main network oddly shows up from time to time as an audio zone, when I don’t have my work vpn running which is very odd.
I’m have a UniFi network same as you with separate vlans. All music devices and core except chromecast stuff are on one network called Roon. Chromecast are on their own network and I have an Iot zero trust network and my generic one.
Remotes work on all vlans except my iot setup as it can’t talk back to any other vlan. Roon Audio zones only work on Roon. Chromecast, Airplay are seen and usable across all but my IoT.
Roon ARC is pretty hit and miss for me on local network. Its fine if I switch WIFI off and use mobile data like I would out of the house. But I keep on getting “Poor Connection” when on the same network (even separate isolated VLAN) to the Roon Core. It may be my setup or just a bi-product of the other issues already discussed.