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MikeConnelly
Enthusiast II
September 14, 2018

Advanced Sonos Wireless Network Configuration Using Sonos Beams

Previously, I described how you can add Sonos BOOSTs to your Sonos system to extend the range and enhance the robustness of SonosNet, the wireless networking protocol used between Sonos speakers.

https://freetime.mikeconnelly.com/archives/6050

With the release of the Sonos Beam, we have updated our Sonos system. Now, we have a more advanced network topology that uses multiple Ethernet-connected Sonos Beam soundbars for better Sonos wireless coverage.

This approach:

-- provides significantly greater wired line backhaul to your SonosNet network, shifts the majority of your Sonos speakers to 5Ghz, freeing spectrum in 2.4Ghz for your remaining Sonos speakers, and isolates each room with a Sonos Beam in its own wireless ‘sandbox’

-- shifts the majority of your Sonos speakers to 5Ghz, freeing spectrum in 2.4Ghz for your remaining Sonos speakers, and

-- isolates each room with a Sonos Beam in its own wireless ‘sandbox’

For more details, please read here:
https://freetime.mikeconnelly.com/archives/7381
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    3 replies

    eventmain
    Contributor I
    January 19, 2019
    Hi Mike,

    I want to comment here and thank you for both your contributions here and also the posts on your fantastic blog—they've been an amazing source of information over the last few days for me and have enabled me to resolve a number of issues I've been suffering from.

    I've also got Ubiquiti networking kit and the info on STP and multicast configurations has been invaluable.

    I have one remaining question:

    I've setup port isolation on any port leading to a Unifi access point, however, I'm not clear on whether I need to do the same for the 3 ethernet connected Sonos speakers I have. One of your posts mentions that you should enable port isolation on any ports leading to a Sonos Boost (which I don't have), however, I'm wondering whether the same goes for regular non-boost ethernet connected Sonos speakers.

    Thanks again for your incredible posts, and for anyone reading this who has both Ubiquiti Unifi networking kit and a Sonos system, do yourself a favour, head over here, and read everything you can: https://freetime.mikeconnelly.com/archives/tag/sonos

    -
    MikeConnellyAuthor
    Enthusiast II
    January 19, 2019
    eventmain,

    Thank you for your very kind comments. Much of what I documented I learned from Sonos' great customer support team.

    To answer your question, you should not enable port isolation on Ethernet-connected Sonos speakers. The reason is that Unifi's port isolation prevents other devices ("clients") from communicating with the device on the isolated port. This can be useful for network security provided that a client doesn't need to communicate with other clients on your LAN.

    But, Sonos devices (speakers and controllers clearly need to talk to each other. And, a critical part of how Sonos works is that it uses multicast traffic for control and, in some cases, audio distribution. So, port isolation of Sonos speakers would prevent your Sonos system from working as expected.

    Best,
    Mike
    MikeConnellyAuthor
    Enthusiast II
    January 23, 2019
    For anyone who is using my best practices for Sonos and Ubiquiti Unifi, I just updated my recommended configuration as of Sonos 9.3 and Unifi Controller 5.10.
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