Roon core running on a decent spec iMac, with Roon Core on the SSD and music files on a NAS, but mostly streaming from Tidal.
Mostly, works fine, but for most of my devices they seem to lose connection to the Roon Core when sleeping and take a long while to re-find it on the network.
Is this common? Is there a work-around? I sometimes have to disconnect from the not-found core, and search again, and (after quite a while - 30s) it will find it again and I can reconnect…
ideas to solve this welcome, as it makes the experience as a whole quite frustrating…
standard network - Fibre to the premises -> google wifi -> Cisco 2960 -> 2960 into which are connected the iMac and the streamer. Other Google Wifi points around as wireless mesh. All switches unmanaged - other cheaper switches elsewhere for other devices (coming off the first Cisco switch), all Gbit.
Devices (laptop, phone, android tablet and iPad) all connected to wifi, decent signal strength. Mac set to not sleep.
I imagine you have a double NAT situation and DHCP is all a mess. Make sure the Google router is set to bridge mode and all the others are working as one continuous network. To check all devices on the network should be in the same IP address range. Check the first 3 numbers are the same. E.g 192.168.1 the last number can be anything but if the third is different you have more than one network and Roon won’t work consistently. You router from the ISP should be handling DHCP for everything, but if you don’t tell the hub to be in bridge mode it will also act as one and give different IP range to other devices and they won’t see each other.
My current-generation Google Nest router cannot run in bridge mode, although I’d be happy to be wrong about that. (The Google Nest router must be in dhcp server mode, as the Google wifi points need to get their own IP addresses from it.)
Based on his diagram, it looks like his entire home network is “downstream” of the “Google wifi” base unit (router). If that’s so, there should be no double nat UNLESS the isp’s router he’s plugged into is also broadcasting wifi and some of his devices are finding that instead of the Google mesh wifi network.
His diagram looks exactly like mine at home. The fact that the Google router is plugged into my isp’s router, which also runs dhcp server, is irrelevant. My entire wired and wifi home network is “downstream” of the Google router, so no double nat.
I have seen cases where it delves out different ip range for wired and wireless that’s caused chaos. But you could be right about the ISP routers wifi clashing with the Google one and then that would be two seperate networks. Can’t say I trust the way these mesh systems work when there is an ISP router in the mix which is more the case here in the UK.
Ahh mine only serves up, both wired and wireless, ip addresses in the 192.186.68.xxx range. Which is different than the 192.168.1.xxx range that my isp router likes as a default.
thanks all but it’s not double NAT or anything like that.
Google Wifi requires it to the be prime router and I don’t have any other DHCP routers in the network. It definitely shouldn’t be in bridge mode, as I don’t have a router from the ISP - it’s modem only into the google device. It’s not a network issue - I have some idea what I’m doing there. It seems to be a Roon Core issue, maybe running on the Mac, rather than a wifi one…
As I say I would be inclined to move the core to the nas if the nas can handle it.
To be quite frank, I have always found apples networking flaky at best, I certainly wouldn’t want to use MacOS as a server, but thats just my experience.
Humm, fair enough. I dont know that it would be an imac issue persay, but what I have noticed over many years is developers will develop for windows far more than mac
That being said I found roon to not be super on windows as a server either. Its rock solid within a docker on OpenMediaVault, i.e. linux all the way.
That being said I have a reasonably powerful server. I have run roon on so many devices as the main server, but I have to say it likes a bit of horse power, once it has it, its very stable.
I wonder for instance, on MacOS a few years ago they implemented within the OS that apps that were not foremost would kind of go into a low power state?
Mac OS doesn’t reprioritise non-foreground services unless you ask it to - and as it’s basically Unix, it’s pretty stable. Generally I agree windows is preferentially developed form but I’ve not seen that Roon focus more on one than the other. Might build a NUC and run a ROCK installation, but if I don’t have to spend £400 I’d rather not… (have spent all my money on the recent upgrades elsewhere in the system…)
For 400 quid you could get a i7 optiplex, install OpenMediaVault on it, 16 gigs ram. slap some drives in and install roon as per roons linux install instructions.
Will smash a nuc into the weeds and all the HDs will be internal. Put it somewhere out of the way and bob, is as they say, your uncle.
To be fair is you repurpose the nas drives and are carefull on ebay you can halve that cost and still have a nas more powerful than most off the shelf numbers.
