Roon’s recommendation is: “Your Roon Server should always have a wired connection”, but doesn’t say wired to what. So, I moved my wired Roon Server (Mac mini) from the main Eero router to a satellite. It’s been running flawlessly for a few days now. No playback dropouts (to satellite-wired or wireless endpoints) or hiccups in the Roon app (wireless). I think the “WiFi backhaul” is working really well. Ookla Speedtest shows ~300 Mbps / 24Mbps up/down with <15ms ping time, so streaming (Qobuz) shouldn’t encounter any issues.
Has anybody done this long term? What are your experiences in reliability of operation?
PS: Motivation for this experiment: I want to upgrade from a Late 2014 Mac mini to the new 2024 Mac mini M4 that will be released tomorrow. It would be a shame to keep this powerful beast tucked away in a cabinet near the main Eero router just for Roon. I want to bring it upstairs to my office desk with KVM where I can use it for many other things, you know like computer stuff .
I used to have my Roon server wired to an Orbi mesh satellite - it was reliable at first but after a few months started to have dropouts so I went wired to router and no problems since. Just my experience. BTW its a WiFi 6 system and my internet speed is 940/110.
I have been using a wireless mesh network for >5 years, a two-node ASUS AiMesh system, that has worked flawlessly. I only recently moved my Roon Server W11 PC from a wireless connection to a cabled Ethernet connection, but that was due to space freeing up near my router. Prior to that I had no issues with up to 5 zones playing wirelessly, and continue to have no issues (my W11 Roon Server is my only direct-Ethernet connected device on my home network, other than my primary router).
I think in my case the satellite was at the edge of its range and would drop speed and sometimes the connection - when it worked it was good but I got fed up with it and was able to find some coax nearby so went wired using MoCA adapters. If your satellite is within comfortable range of the router then the experience should be better.
My satellite is approximately 35 feet away from the main, with only drywall and wood flooring in between, so the signal is pretty good. I’m consistently getting ~300Mbps internet speed at the satellite. It’s not as fast as the 850Mbps at the main, but it still is way overkill for Roon. Latency is more important (to prevent dropouts), which also appears to be very good.
The point is, your Roon server needs a robust connection to your router. Roon recommends an ethernet connection to your router or switch, but sometimes you can get this with a mesh network or WIFI. It just depends on the situation, signal strength, interference, etc.
At home, I have two Roon servers, both connected by ethernet to a switch. Away from home, I use my Dell Windows 11 server connected by WIFI and USB to Verizon cellular data via Speedify, iPhone, and two iPads.
Roon’s networking best practices doesn’t say ethernet connection to the router or switch. It says “Your Roon Server should always have a wired connection”, which doesn’t preclude connecting wired to a mesh satellite.
I ran Room server connected to a Orbi Mesh satellite for a long time without any issues or drop outs at all.
I only moved it to the main router when I wanted to plug the HDMI into my TV for multi channel output.
I personally believe the recommendation is to avoid having the server traffic avoid WiFi usage. If you have a Mesh with a dedicated back haul channel then this should work really well.
Absolutely true, it just needs to be a good WiFi setup and have plenty of bandwidth available.
Keeping the Roon Server off WiFi allows running multiple endpoints on WiFi. I have a number of WiFi endpoints and even running upscaling to DSD512 works fine
Hi there,
My NUCLEUS ROON server runs in a 1GB wired netwerk, it always works.
My HEGEL, BRYSTON and NAD are also wired on this same network.
However my control units (iPad pro) are on a Wi-Fi network (MESH ORBI RBR350)
Wired : 192.1.168.*
ORBI : 10.0.0.*
This works fine. But the load is on the wired network
It happens (rarely)that the connection iPad / ROON is lost, and you cannot operate ROON…
Conclusion: it certainly works, but it can fail. Be aware that the big data (sound files) are on the wired network.
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