My home’s internet connection is Starlink. It’s my understanding that Starlink’s router doesn’t support port forwarding. Am I out of luck for using Roon ARC?
If I were to switch the Starlink box into passthrough mode and use a separate router, could I make that work? I’ve been reading that Starlink passthrough has some limitations of its own (including loss of access to Starlink diagnostics), so I really only want to do that if absolutely necessary.
Starlink uses CGNAT so using your own router won’t help. Your only choice is to implement some type of VPN to bypass the the double NAT and get you a public facing IP.
Is it possible to set up VPN if my Core is running on ROCK? Are there instructions somewhere?
(Seems to me, at least for ROCK, this functionality should be baked right in. After all, it’s supposed to be an appliance that “just works”… right?)
No definitely not via ROCK you’ll need a router or dedicated appliance to do it.
I seem to be between a ROCK and a hard place. [heh]
Roon’s own OS can’t support THE premier feature of Roon 2.0? How disappointing. (Glad I didn’t shell out $1400+ for a Nucleus and built my own instead.)
What sort of “router or dedicated appliance” do I need, and how would I connect it (presumably) between my Starlink router and my ROCK?
The rock supports the premier feature just fine. Your network hardware and provider doesn’t.
Upgrade to Starlink’s business service which will get you a public IP address.
Get a router with a VPN client in it capable of connecting to NordVPN or something similar that can give you a public IP address. You will have to pay for that VPN service.
just download the music you want into Roon ARC when on your home network no need for a connection back to your server to listen to that downloaded music.
@John_Elsbree - I am in a very similar position to you, running Roon ROCK on a NUC (with a fixed LAN IP), and using Starlink. But I do have a Unifi USG “router” immediately downstream of the Starlink box, so will see if I can set up some form of VPN on that. But this is right at the edge of my pay grade, so will struggle a bit. Hey Ho! 
My ISP is Starlink - I’m no network guy, but I did get ARC to work - I have my core running on a Windows 10 NUC - I use Mullvad VPN service. I installed the ’ Mullvad VPN for Windows’ app on that NUC, and added a port to be forwarded to the NUC devise on the Mullvad website that was now listed on my account after installing the app - next I restarted the app on the NUC and started ROON - I updated the port number to the one Mullvad provided under the ARC settings. At this point ROON really did the rest - I too don’t use the Starlink router and have an ASUS router with port forwarding turned off - so maybe something like this may work with just the Starlink router? don’t know…
I choice Mullvad because they offer port forwarding. I see NordVPN has been mentioned. They are big and there could be some way to configure it with them, but I do know they don’t offer port forwarding at this time.
I’m sure there’s other ways to do this, and hopefully in the future this can be addressed without the use of a VPN. Starlink seems to be slowly rolling out some IPv6 - so it could work once that is implemented. The good folks at ROON too are fully aware of the situation and I’m sure will try to address it once the dust settles a bit.
I’m hoping the Starlink Business suggestion wasn’t serious. $500/month? Get real.
I guess I’ll have to look into the NordVPN solution. I really don’t understand all the nuances here, so there will be a learning curve.
It’s a shame that Roon doesn’t have a ready answer for this.
Look into @Peter_Gallagher VPN solution. NordVPN will require a static IP address I believe, and Peter’s solution is known to work already.
Update: If running ROCK then Peter’s solution won’t work as you can’t install a VPN client right on ROCK.
I’m a little fuzzy on what will happen without having a static IP from the VPN service. I’ve been connected now for a couple of days and it seems to be holding up. I don’t know if they’ll assign a new IP while connected to the VPN? If not, that seems good… On the other hand, if you get a new IP assigned after disconnecting and reconnecting to the VPN, with ROON then reconfiguring itself, that seems ok as well, as ARC wouldn’t work anyway without the VPN connection. The thing that would bust it (I think) is if they assign a new IP while connected and ROON can’t figure that out.
Like I mentioned at this point, this is all sort of new to me and just an experiment. I’m sure there will be good , solid solutions popping up over the next several weeks for the folks with outstanding issues.
Exactly. Like I said, I seem to be caught between a ROCK and a hard place.
I got it working pretty easily on Starlink with Tailscale. Didn’t even need port forwarding. The key was running the ARC app’s initial setup while connected to my local network. Then I could turn wifi off on my phone, connect to Tailscale, and ARC worked. How well it works will depend on what kind of mood Starlink’s in. When I first tried it this afternoon, it worked really well. When I tested it a little just now, there were a decent number of pauses while playing a test track. So YMMV but it’s definitely possible.
I’m not 100% sure, but I suspect what allows it to work in my setup is that I’m running Tailscale on a Raspberry Pi 4 configured to route my local subnet over Tailscale. So any device that connects to my Tailscale can access any device on my local network even if it’s not running Tailscale itself. My theory is that ARC is actually seeing my core as being on the local network, and that’s allowing it to work even though the ARC settings in the main Roon app says “not ready.”
I’m not a networking engineer, nor do I want to become one. I just want to listen to music. Roon on ROCK had been a blissfully turnkey experience for me, up until Tuesday with the introduction of ARC. (Sure, I could keep using what I have and just ignore the ARC feature, but I don’t want to pass it up just because Starlink happens to be my only viable ISP option.)
Given my current setup (Starlink, ROCK), what additional hardware/software/services will I need to buy and configure to make all of this work? I’m looking for something that explains it at the same level as the build-your-own ROCK instructions. Am I asking too much?
See if this guy can offer help. His videos are pretty good. This video in question won’t help, but gives you an idea he knows his stuff.
Reading back over your first post, you would need the ethernet adapter, the Starlink router in bypass mode*, and have a 3rd party router. You’d also need a Raspberry Pi 3 or 4, and an account with Tailscale which is free for personal use. I wouldn’t say any of this is particularly difficult to do especially since there are lots of great guides out there that I used myself. I’m definitely not a network engineer either. But it is pretty involved. It is not turnkey. It is very DIY, and there’s a lot of Linux commandline stuff involved. It’s not going to be as simple as the ROCK instructions. I don’t know how comfortable you’d be with all that. If this all sounds daunting and unfamiliar to you, I’d recommend going another direction. You can use Soundiiz to sync your Roon library to a lot of streaming services you can use away from home for example. That’s what I was doing before. Or if you want to try to tackle this I’d be happy to try to dig up some guides to help you out.
*I really haven’t found any downsides to bypass mode in using it for a couple of months now. And it’s not difficult to reenable access for the app and the web portal. It just takes one router setting. Or some routers may even take care of it for you.
I have just achieved the Tailscale solution to get around a CGNAT with Roon ROCK. I took an hour to do after watching the video I’m linking. However, I did use my Synology NAS to host the Tailscape APP and I had to learn how to SSH into the synology to execute 1 command. I would describe this process as simple overall. It does need more hardware than you have described but leaves you with a system that functions as if you were on your home network even when you are elsewhere so port forwarding is not required.
I would highly recommend it, you can run the Tailscale app on different hardware. It functions as a ‘subnet router’ for your Roon setup if you run ROCK. I think there will be other more simple solutions if you are not using ROCK. Don’t be dissuaded by the learning curve, it’s a free way to avoid CGNAT which is well regarded in the wider internet community.
https://www.wundertech.net/how-to-set-up-tailscale-on-a-synology-nas/
Just to add that the end result of ARC working is worth the effort.
Same here. We’re in rural New Zealand and there’s either ropey cellular internet or Starlink. That’s it. No fibre in my lifetime out here.
So obviously, we have Starlink. The only router we have on the Network is the one Starlink supply, with the Ethernet adapter.
I didn’t realize that the Windows and Mac versions of Tailscale now support being subnet routers. This was a LInux only thing not that long ago. So if you have a PC or Mac around that you can leave on and connected to the internet 24/7, this actually turns out to be a lot more simple than I thought it would be for you. I don’t think you’d even need the ethernet adapter and bypass mode. So if you already have a computer you can use:
@Andy_Jones also created a very nice thread about this which includes a video of a guy setting up subnet routing.
This is very promising. Thank you! The ARC app is now able to reach my core with my phone’s WiFi turned off. I can browse and play anything from Tidal. Profit!
The only thing I don’t have working yet is playback of the music stored on my core. I get a red “Poor connection” banner, and the music doesn’t play.
Speedtest on my phone (with WiFi still off) shows 99.5 Mbps down, 2.69 Mbps up, 44 ms ping.
Speedtest on a device within my home network (on Starlink) shows 12.57 Mbps down (I’ve come to expect this during evening primetime), 9.58 Mbps up, 41 ms ping.
Any thoughts on how to diagnose/fix the “Poor connection” bottleneck?