What role does mDNS / Avahi play in Room Assistant?

[Colorado4Wheeler]

I’m asking this question because on one of my four dedicated RA Pi’s Avahi constantly fails and the mDNS name is no longer available on the network, although the IP address works and I can SSH into that device without any issue, then I restart Avahi and everything works again. But, while Avahi is down, the RA on that device no longer advertises any hosts found, instead my devices will be picked up on the next nearest RA device.

I don’t know that this is an RA issue, as the other devices don’t have this happening and I have considered reloading it entirely but in the meantime I’m bouncing Avahi every 15 minutes.

Any suggestions as to what I can do to fix this problem? Is RA this married to Avahi that it breaks? Is there a setting I can change to make it not rely on mDNS?