Slightly lost in networking setup. Trying to have a basic setup to see if I can control Roon Rock from an android phone on a different network (another wifi or mobile).
Have a Roon Rock on an old NUC - I see that Tailscale is now baked into the ROCK interface and have logged onto an account
Have Taislcale on the android mobile as well
Both showing up as Connected in the Tailscale Machines panel
Cannot load the Roon remote Android app [Waiting for your Roon Server…]
I don’t think subnet routers are needed since Tailscale is now directly on the ROCK. What am I doing wrong?
When did you install ROCK on the NUC and did the NUC still use BIOS mode at the time or UEFI mode? Because currently the Tailscale support is only for the UEFI-mode installs.
In other words, what’s the Roon OS version and build number of your ROCK?
Roon has two different apps. Roon app only works on the same local subnet as the Roon server, because it relies on IP multicast to find the Roon server. The Roon ARC app is for access to your Roon server music from anywhere that can connect to your Roon server. Tailscale facilitates this by creating a VPN between your phone with the Roon ARC app and the Roon server.
My previous setup was the same NUC running linux with Roon server and ZeroTierOne. I had also ZeroTierOne on a dietpi and on my mobile so I could play something form roon on a second network via the dietpi. The linux does seem to be far less optimal than the Rock on an old NUC (heat, noise and latency) so I am just trying to figure out if I can get the same setup to work with Rock and Tailscale.
I.e.:
ROCK on NUC with Tailscale on Network 1
Dietpi with Tailscale and Roon client on Network 2 to output music
Android or iPhone or Ipad as remotes only on Network 2
I got it all to work with when I had linux instead of ROCK.
Also have a Synology if that can act as an always on intermediary in some way…
My Arc works beautifully and I do not need Tailscale for it. This use case is for the Dietpi.
My current thinking is that Tailscale implementation in ROCK is somehow restricted but I don’t know. Would be grateful for any ideas!
I have Tailscale on multiple servers on multiple locations. It does not route IP multicast across subnets. IP multicast is how Roon servers and endpoints discover each other. Here’s a very good explanation of the issue as a Tailscale feature request FR: Support for general purpose multicast · Issue #11134 · tailscale/tailscale · GitHub. As you noted, ZeroTier would not have the issue because it works at a lower level in the network stack.
As far as I remember, they got it to work sometimes, but not reliably. I was able to do it briefly too, but then not again. I didn’t want to waste more time on it, but here’s my guess. When the Roon server and an endpoint learn about each other using IP multicast, they remember the information (address:port) for a while. If then the endpoint is moved to a different subnet that has a properly configured Tailscale subnet router to the server’s subnet (which is a pain to do), server and endpoint see each other until one of them “forgets” the other for some reason (such as power off).
In your experience is there any way to get Rock to be accessed via ZeroTier or do I need to revert to Roon server on Linux? Thank you for your guidance.
I don’t use ROCK, only Roon server on Ubuntu Server Linux, and I’ve never tried ZeroTier, only Tailscale. I’ve seen comments on using ZeroTier with Roon elsewhere on this forum (search will find them) but I’ve not read them closely. I installed Tailscale on my systems for other reasons than Roon, and I’m happy that I can rely on it for ARC as well without having to mess around with port forwarding, but I never had a strong need to run Roon itself across subnets, so I didn’t bother looking into ZeroTier.
