Roon Server/Client setup: What if every client would be a server?

Roon Software Discussion
1

Hi, I just thought about the current concept of the server/client structure of Roon. I read here in the forum that the Roon server should have a pretty powerful CPU and that certain devices are not suitable as a server because they are not powerful enough.

I just thought about it and I dont know if this is technically doable or has any other weak spots. But I want to share it anyway. I asked myself: If the Server is not powerful enough, why can’t the clients help out?

In the current setup the RoonServer does all the work, but what if every Client works as well as a server? There will be of course still a designated server instance. But as soon as a client connects to it, it will ask the server „Hey Server, I am here. Is there currently anything that needs to be done?“. Maybe it would be possible to have a Roon Server on a much lower equipped device like a Raspberry Pi or a NAS then.
Maybe this would also lead to a faster core management in general. What do you think about this approach?

2

The aspects of Roon that cause it to require a “powerful” machine are not straightforward to scale horizontally by handing off work.

If we were to go down that road, complexity would go up, reliability would go down, we’d be building a much less feature-rich product, and we would not be able to evolve it as quickly.

Over time, this situation will improve–hardware costs are expected to decrease faster than our performance demands increase. Eventually, I think we will run on <$99 machines and NAS’s just fine.