Chromecast/Airplay to Bang & Olufson Beolab 50, 28, M5 and Stage
Number of Tracks in Library
45.000 tracks
Description of Issue
As of right now the Roon server is on my local network.
The server will eventually have to be moved into a datacenter from which I have a 1Gb connection, but for obvious reasons it will be on a seperate networks, so some routing will have to be done.
As far as I can gather, Roon would prefer both to be on the same network, my guess is because of some broadcast traffic?
I would like to know if it is possible to have the server and the players on seperate networks some how? Or should I just quit trying?
If you look in the tinkering section there are posts there about achieving this, it’s not officially supported.
I’ve moved your post to that section where the tinkerers may see it.
Apologies for the correction Dan, I know you’re only writing what RoonLabs would want you to. But I couldn’t not correct your false statement.
Roon requires very specific network traffic to be sent and received between core, remotes and endpoints. This is most easily accomplished by having all devices on the same subnet. RoonLabs will not provide support for configurations that have devices on different subnets.
As already mentioned there’s a number of posts here which will either help point you in the right direction or convince you to not bother.
I think the above is more clarification than correction. But to be clear this is new. It isn’t simply working across diverse subnets, it is on a completely separate network effectively in the cloud. There are legal questions that might need to be asked as well as the functional ones. This isn’t just tinkering, I think the higher ups need to see this potential use case and rule on its legality.
This is not an attempt to circumvent any legal issues. I actually have all the music physically on CD/LP, I have just ripped it into files. Most of it is not available on Tidal or Qobuz. I would just like to place my server on a remote location, which is hard to do without using two separate subnets.
I am aware that my requirement is an edge case.
I guess the “issue” is the Roon client app which doesn’t seem to be able to connect to a specific IP, or at least not initially. But “funny” enough if I start the application on my home network, then switch to another network (with the application running), it seems to work just fine… it is just if I reopen the application it cannot find the server because it issues a broadcast which is not forwarded between subnets…
Streaming from the server to AirPlay or ChromeCast devices does not require broadcast traffic as far as I know? (maybe only to discover the devices, bit once configured it should also work across networks?)
This is not an attempt to circumvent any legal issues. I actually have all the music physically on CD/LP, I have just ripped it into files. Most of it is not available on Tidal or Qobuz. I would just like to place my server on a remote location, which is hard to do without using two separate subnets.
I understand this from your perspective. But there are other considerations like the security of Roon. Roon as a concept has to be hard to share to work. I think remote server working would make it easier to share.
This idea isn’t particularly new. There are numerous threads on which users have discussed using various strategies including VPN, UDP proxies, zero trust networks, and even cloud hosting on Azure/AWS.
Discovery is the first issue you have to get past. The next set of issues are performance and reliability. If you have a low-latency, high bandwidth connection, you’ll probably be fine if you can solve discovery.
It’s not my business but I do wonder what the forcing function is that’s leading you to move your core to a datacenter. Clearly you have a reasonably sophisticated network at your listening site (home?). Is there no option for keeping your core there? If security is the driver, is there a vlan approach that might solve for your concerns?
If not then perhaps do a search here for “UDP Proxy” or “ZeroTier” to understand how some people have done things similar to what you’re exploring. Hope you figure something out.
I have Roon core on a server in a Datacenter. I use zerotier to connect all the endpoints. It’s working great so far bith both roonbridge and squeezelite as endpoint.
If one of your clients is under non ideal network conditions I advise you to use squeezelite and not roonbridge since it uses a more flexible network protocol compared to raat.
I think you misunderstand my issue; I am planing moving my Roon Server to another network than my home network. As far as I know the Roon server and Roon Applications rely on broadcasting on the network the server is placed. As far as I can understand my Mikrotik routers are able to re-broadcast over different networks, I will have a closer look at this once I have moved my server.
An alternative would be to still keep a local Roon server on my home network but reach the music library via a network share, either NFS or SMB/CIFS…
I have Roon Server in another network different than my home network too. As I said my RoonServer is in a VM on a dedicated server in a Datacenter in a country different than where I live.
And I’ve been using it this way for years.
I think I have completely understood your problem, am I wrong?
Well when I startup the Roon software on my MacBook, it will broadcast to find a “Roon Core” aka. server on the network where my MacBook is… When I am on another network from my server, it will not find the Roon Core server. Because typically broadcast traffic are not routed between networks.
Example… my home network is 10.10.10.0/24, my office network is 10.10.20.0/24 and my datacenter network is 10.0.2.0/24. They are all connected via VPNs, but as mentioned broadcasts are not routed via the VPNs.
Funny side node, is that if I do not shutdown the Roon application between home and office, (on my laptop) it will actually work just fine…
But this is just half the problem, because if I guess you will also have a similar issue if you have “remote” speakers at home and and the office, because this also seems to be broadcast based as you are unable to add an AirPlay or Chromecast device with a specific IP address…
But to be honest, this is just my initial observations, I will have to do a bit more testing when I have time…
