This has been a issue with Roon remote since forever, Roon remote is having trouble to connect to Roon core, sometimes it works but most of the time the remote connection is unable to connect Roon core. Can’t this be done a bit more flawlessly just like Chromecast or Spotify connect?
I use an Android phone, my roon core is installed on a intel NUC computer, streaming to a raspberry pi. The issue has been the same back in the days when I was running Roon on my iMac and with USB DACs. It seems to be inherent to how Roon handles the network connection to core.
Are there any network settings that I can optimize?
You should be aware that we have often seen ISP-provided routers have a poor implementation of passing multicast traffic (which is what Roon uses for Core/Device discovery).
I can’t say with certainty yet if this is what’s going on regarding this issue, but it is one aspect to be considered. Generally speaking, we have also seen that turning on “Multicast Routing” , “IGMP Proxying” or “IGMP Snooping” in router settings has helped in the past with multicast issues.
You mentioned above that you also have an iMac in your house, does the iMac exhibit the same behavior when you try to connect to your NUC?
Since this behavior is just impacting your Android remote in that case, I would check the IGMP Snooping/Proxying settings on your router. These specific settings as helped Android connections in the past. You could also try pressing on the “Help” that appears when you can’t find the Core and putting in the IP address of the Core to specify a manual connection or typing in 255.255.255.255 as the IP address.
Yes, it is very likely that a dedicated router will help. As I mentioned, ISP provided routers often have poor multicast implementations and other, consumer-grade routers have a better implementation.
Even if the router doesn’t help with this issue specifically, using a properly spec’d router will provide a better overall experience for Roon and other communication on this network.
If your router’s multicast settings are properly configured and working as expected, no you shouldn’t have to do the 255.255.255.255 workaround. This suggestion is for routers which have a poor multicast implementation.
