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DavidKuk23
Contributor I
July 18, 2018
Answered

BEAM: Connecting wired network kills network access for all devices.

I'm still debugging this but wondered if anyone else has come across it.

My Beam is all installed via WiFi and I'm very happy with it. However I thought I'd hard wire it to my network as I have fixed connections to most of the permanently connected devices. Unfortunately (tried 4 times now) when I connect a network cable after a few seconds all my home network dies. Symptoms from another PC is that I can no longer ping the gateway (192.168.0.1) any more. Unplug the Beam and it recovers.

Network is Virgin Media SuperHub -> TP-Link T2600G switch -> devices.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks - David
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ratty
rattyAnswer
July 18, 2018
Presumably you have another wired Sonos device. In that case wiring the Beam is almost certainly creating an undetected network loop, resulting in a broadcast storm. In the TP-Link switch you'll need to enable STP (not RSTP).

Background reading: https://en.community.sonos.com/troubleshooting-228999/sonos-and-the-spanning-tree-protocol-16973
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6 replies

ratty
rattyAnswer
July 18, 2018
Presumably you have another wired Sonos device. In that case wiring the Beam is almost certainly creating an undetected network loop, resulting in a broadcast storm. In the TP-Link switch you'll need to enable STP (not RSTP).

Background reading: https://en.community.sonos.com/troubleshooting-228999/sonos-and-the-spanning-tree-protocol-16973
    Dayv
    Lyricist III
    July 18, 2018
    Do you lose connectivity for everything, both with wired and wireless connections? It sounds like there may be a loop, causing a broadcast storm. Probably packets coming in on the wire and being sent back via WiFi, or the reverse, or both at once. As a test you could try disabling Wi-Fi with the Beam connected via wire, to verify if it is because both network connections are up at one time.

    If that is the case, the Beam may need Wi-Fi disabled while wired Ethernet is connected, but I don’t know how to do that yet. You also log into your Wi-Fi router and add the Beam’s MAC address to a blocked list, so that wired connectivity is the only one functioning. Doing this should leave the Beam’s *direct* wireless communication with other Sonos devices intact.
    ratty
    ratty
    July 18, 2018
    the Beam may need Wi-Fi disabled while wired Ethernet is connected
    Disabling the radio on the Beam would be an unsupported configuration. It would doubtless also kill the connection to any surrounds/SUB which had been bonded to it.

    You also log into your Wi-Fi router and add the Beam’s MAC address to a blocked list
    The suspected network loop doesn't involved the router's WiFi, hence MAC filtering is irrelevant.
      Dayv
      Lyricist III
      July 18, 2018
      Whoops, I had comments blocked in my browser, didn’t see the previous reply. As Ratty said, if you have other wired Sonos speakers, that is probably the root of the issue. Sonos speakers intercommunicate wirelessly as a mesh, so more than one wired connection to any one of them is probably functionally equivalent to having multiple wired connections to a single device.

      As Ratty noted above, spanning-tree is a good option here, if supported on the LAN.
        DavidKuk23Author
        Contributor I
        July 18, 2018
        Good afternoon,

        That may well be it as I have a Sonos Play:1 connected directly to the router. Many many thanks. I'll take another look at the setup tonight.

        Regards - David
          DavidKuk23Author
          Contributor I
          July 18, 2018
          Many thanks to ratty (and Dayv) for their answers.

          That was the cause and I had spanning tree disabled on the switch. All sorted now.

          Cheers - David
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