Boost wired or not!

Cabling more is usually better. I personally have a router than cannot cope with more than one being wired, but I am in a minority.

Your bridge and your boost are both devices used to help SonosNet create a stronger network - having your boost close to a play1 and not ethernet connected seems counter intuitive. SonosNet effectively allows each unit to wirelessly communicate with it's closest neighbour, so your boost would ideally be ethernet connected and placed centrally to wherever you think there may be a hole in the signal.

I have no idea how all of that relates to your TP Link Mesh system, sorry.

To add to Nick's helpful and accurate comments, if you could wire the Boost in its current location you might as well wire the Play:1 beside it. I would ten to put the Boost where the Bridge is (I assume close to the router) and use the Bridge, wired or wireless, to support the network elsewhere. I suspect the Bridge will have no effect anyway.

Don't put any Sonos unit TOO close to the router - a distance of at least a couple of feet is suggested.

BOOST includes a more effective radio than a SONOS BRIDGE. BOOST should be the wired item. If you have a difficult SONOS area, you could place BRIDGE (wired or wireless) about half way between the problem area and a stable area.

WiFi and SonosNet will ignore each other, but it is best to use different channels for WiFi and SonosNet.

@mickeyg04, poorly configured network switches and routers can be a problem when multiple SONOS units are wired. Unmanaged switches (simple and dumb) do not usually cause any problems. Managed switches, must have all of the SONOS connected ports configured for “STP”, not “RSTP”. If STP is not enabled on a managed switch, the whole network will crash, not just a SONOS piece or two.

I’m not familiar with the TP Link mesh networking. Most of the Mesh setups include their own router. If this is the case for your system, you could have two routers vying for control of your network. Neither router can win this combat and the client always looses. Only one router can be enabled. Probably the easiest way for you to handle this would be to turn OFF the WiFi in your original router, disconnect ALL network clients from the original router, connecting only the TP Link router. All of your network clients, wired and wireless, will be handled by TP Link. Note that there are other ways, not quite as straightforward, to handle this. Setting one of the routers to “Bridge” mode is effective, but you should do some reading about this.

Being lazy and wanting stuff to "just work" I went with the wired Boost SonosNet setup. I eventually wired several other Sonos devices, no particularly good reason except they were near an Ethernet port. That is all working out great with the one gotcha, that your Sonos devices and Controller must be on the same sub-net. Worked out fine for my WiFi devices but I had to move my Windows computer from the subnet it was on to the one the Sonos gear was on. Much less aggravation than using WiFi!

Many thanks for all your replies. I will attempt a few of the provided solutions, including possibly resetting the WiFi settings on my Sonos controller and changing it to a wired setup with the Boost acting as my original Bridge.
If I do this, can I have more than 1 sonos product connected via ethernet? Also, as my Iphone automatically connects to my WiFi network when in range, I can just start using Sonos. How does the iphone controller connect to the speakers if WiFi newtork is turned off. Does it create a specific Sonosnet to connect to? Apologies for my ignorance with this.

Unless you have incompatible network hardware connecting multiple sonos devices ot Ethernet works well.

iPhone will not connect to SonosNet, only Android based phones will.

Thanks Stanley. So, if I setup as wired will iPhone controller still work?

Thanks Stanley. So, if I setup as wired will iPhone controller still work?

Hi there,

Your iPhone will communicate with your Sonos system through your router. Even if the Sonos units are wired into the network, the router will allow communication with the system and wireless controllers like your iPhone.