Das Werkstatt

[PROBLEM]
RPi as pulseaudio server (tcp sink) configured for receiving audio from computers on the over the network.
Works (partially), but when another computer is turned on, and has Avahi-discovery of pulseaudio enabled - the sound on the RPi stops.

The first computer ("hostname1") is connected over wired ethernet - and the 2nd computer "hostname2" is connected wireless.

Pulseaudio on the RPi server says:

I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: Freeing input 1 "bcm2835 ALSA for usename@hostname2"
I: [pulseaudio] client.c: Freed 3 "pulseaudio"
I: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Connection died.

After that it outputs this - and just hangs:

D: [alsa-sink-bcm2835 ALSA] alsa-sink.c: Requested to rewind 131072 bytes.
D: [alsa-sink-bcm2835 ALSA] alsa-sink.c: Limited to 5512 bytes.
D: [alsa-sink-bcm2835 ALSA] alsa-sink.c: before: 1378
D: [alsa-sink-bcm2835 ALSA] alsa-sink.c: after: 1378
D: [alsa-sink-bcm2835 ALSA] alsa-sink.c: Rewound 5512 bytes.
D: [alsa-sink-bcm2835 ALSA] sink.c: Processing rewind...
D: [alsa-sink-bcm2835 ALSA] sink-input.c: Have to rewind 5512 bytes on render memblockq.
D: [alsa-sink-bcm2835 ALSA] source.c: Processing rewind...

[SOLUTION]

There's an interesting thread on Gentoo forums describing exactly the same setup and symptoms.

It says:

I figured it out.
I found an article saying that on some routers when WAN Ping respond is enabled then VPN wont work, so i was like ok lets try this...and POP it works.
So when pulseaudio does not want to work over wireless then disabling WAN ping might help.

Will investigate this.
To be continued...