“There is no official fix though people do try various workarounds. Roon is not supported on different subnets or VLANs.”
Just found this comment on an old thread, please someone tell me this isn’t still the case?
I have a Unifi network, and with IoT, general security and the sheer number of devices in homes these says VLANs are an absolute must. In a new property we are renovating we will have easily over 255 devices.
Roon needs to support subnets, please tell me this is now possible?
Still the same.
There are people who have it working across vlans, have a look in the tinkering section.
Regardless of whether it is officially supported, which I can’t answer, it works across VLANs. In order to work, you need a Avahi Service running to forward mDNS. I think, there is a Multicast DNS global network setting anywhere in the Unifi controller settings to enable.
As well have a look at IGMP Snooping if you are using IP/TV or Airplay and want to address different VLAN segments.
But try first only to enable the mDNS Service. This should allow your Roon server to find your endpoints inter VLAN, as long you are allowed to route between them and there is no firewall ruleset which prevents this traffic.
If you’re using VLANs already (or that’s the plan) then the easiest solution is to just create a separate VLAN for all things Roon (remotes, core, endpoints, NASes that house music files for Roon, etc.). That said, I use an Edgerouter 4 with Unifi APs on my network but I seem to recall an option in the Unifi UI to enable mDNS across VLANs so I would start there. I don’t use Roon across VLANs but I do use AirPlay and AirPrint across VLANs and have that working just fine with the mDNS related settings that Edgerouters have.
Hi,
I already have multicast DNS enabled on all networks, so you’re saying that with this it should work?
Would you be able to link to any docs about an mDNS service, where would I run this?
Bridges are part of other devices such as my main PC, I don’t want that on Roon only VLAN.
I think you are saying that devices like main PCs are also endpoints/remotes? That’s fine just allow that PC to reach other subnets. If that’s not a clean/desirable enough solution for you enable mDNS across subnets, update firewalls accordingly and then you can put devices on any VLAN you want.
Nope it doesn’t work for endpoints in general as they use UDP multicast which is local to vlan they use SSDP. Chromecasts and Airplay work, and for some reason pc clients running the full software do as well, but Roon Ready do not nor do Roon bridge. You have to find a way to get SSDP across vlan. Which isn’t simple.
I have 4 vlans , main, roon, chromecast/Plex and iot. Roon has core and all Roon Ready Roon Bridge UPnP, Sonos.
Any remote can see and operate across any vlan except iot as that’s blocked remotes use mdns. My chromecast and some airplay stuff is on the Plex vlan, Roon can see and operate these just fine. My mac is on the main one, tends to work when vpn isn’t active but sometimes it won’t show at all. If I move any roon ready or roon bridge devices to another vlan that the core isn’t on they are not seen.
What you need, is a mDNS repeater typically running on your Router/Firewall. I have running a package named avahi on my pfSense Firewall.
If you are running a Unifi only network configuration with an USG or UDM you need to configure this on that devices. Also do not forget to allow mDNS traffic (5353TCP/UDP) between the VLAN. Check your Firewall log/settings!
Just search the Internet for “mDNS across VLAN with Unifi”.
Unifi VLANs by default allow ALL traffic between them, I’ve not added any rules or traffic blocks at all.
Yes I have a bridge on my office PC so I can connect a DAC to roon
It doesn’t work for Roon Ready I have mDNS configured and it doesn’t work as they don’t use the same protocols.
This is set it doesn’t work for Roon Ready or Bridges.
Ok so all other posts here are wrong about mDNS then? including the one from @Obi ?
Is there any way to configure RoonBridge to use a specific interface? My main PC has two NICs and i have two ethernet ports here, so in theory I could have this PC use two VLANs right? Can I configure RoonBridge in any way, from what I remember it’s just a package that sets up a service, nothing can be configured.
In my experience yes it doesn’t work the mdns across vlans enabled. RAAT doesnt use a fixed port it uses a number of different UDP ranges. More is needed and it’s not in the gui to do it easily. No idea I don’t have anything with multiple ports.
This is honestly just stupid for such a software, it’s the whole point of it for gods sake.
I dont know of any multiroom software that works over VLANs that relies on autodiscovery. Only works on LMS as you can physically enter in the ip address of a server for it to connect to, which you cant do with Roon endpoints.
Sonos, Bluesound dont work over subnets.
I can think of several reasons why intervlan support is unwanted.
Anyway, it is not the point of Roon to support complex networktopologies.
Roon is home entertainment software.
UDP can traverse subnets just fine regardless of ports used. The issue is the addresses used. If RAAT is using a broadcast or multicast address for endpoint discovery then this will of course be blocked by default from traversing subnets.
This has nothing to do with Roon or any other software and is by design. This is how networking works. Routers by default don’t forward broadcast or multicast traffic to other subnets. The whole point of multiple subnets is to take advantage of this to breakup broadcast/multicast domains. You have to plan and configure your network accordingly. I guess you could always add a post to the Feature Suggestions section requesting the ability to setup endpoints manually by IP/DNS name.
My experience tracks everything @Simon_Arnold3 has written.
My network is UniFi, several vlans. One is dedicated to Roon and that’s where my core, all endpoints, all bridges, and extension-like things (including rooExtend and RoPieee) live. My controllers, which are iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS all live on my primary vlan. Many firewall rules in place.
Everything works fine except none of the controllers are seen as endpoints. So I can’t, for example, play to my Macs or phones. This isn’t an issue for me because I have a RoonReady headphone amp on my work desk and I use a RoonReady DAP around the house. Both of those are on the Roon vlan.
I did something like this for a while with Roon server running on an Ubuntu box with two NICs, one on my primary network, one on my Roon network. Without any configuration on my part, Roon server bound to both NICs. This meant that devices and endpoints on the two vlans just worked.
But ARC was another story because I couldn’t force ARC to a specific NIC/vlan, which meant that I couldn’t reliably forward ARC traffic from my firewall, since the IP address wasn’t stable. I don’t know how ARC chose one or the other IP but which NIC ARC bound to could, and did, change across reboots.
I wish Roon would allow manual addition of endpoints by IP address. Literally just allow me to go to Audio, click “Add Device”, and enter an IP address. It’s discovery that’s broken, not routing (we can all solve that with firewall rules or whatever). Manual addition would address that.
Very helpful. I’m in the process of building out either ARC or Plexamp and am looking to do VLAN segregation. Seems fraught with risks when opening a media server to the public Internet so I’m taking my time to ensure that a compromise of the server won’t spillover into my primary VLAN.
Anyone using a Cisco ASA in this sort of scenario successfully? Unifi is very different.