The system will automatically switch to “SonosNet” when one or more speakers is wired to the network. SonosNet will build a private mesh network and ignore WiFi. WiFi will ignore SonosNet. It is best if SonosNet and WiFi use different channels. WiFi should use 20MHz channel 1, 6, or 11. Don’t use “Auto” WiFi channels. Wiring to the Orbi satellites is not recommended.
If you will be wiring only one speaker in a L/R pair, wire the left speaker when practical. This is not super important, but it usually results in more favorable network traffic.
Regardless of what your “expert” said, SONOS will not use Bluetooth to interconnect with each other. Interconnections will be made by wire, WiFi, or SonosNet, as appropriate. ROAM and MOVE will always use WiFi.
Sorry, wrong topic to respond. Edited now, I wanted to respond here
I’ve been traveling, just getting back to on my ongoing Sonos issues. I have a few questions for @buzz if you see this.
“The system will automatically switch to “SonosNet” when one or more speakers is wired to the network.”
I ethernet wired an Arc to one of the satellites, which is ethernet wired to the Orbi router with a Boost. Never saw SonosNet or anything referencing Sonos. Most but not all the Sonos speakers showed as being Netgear 2.4 Guest Network wired with a few on 5G. Did you mean I should have literally seen a “SonosNet” partition? All I see is a Netgear 2.4 Guest network.
Two hours on the phone this morning with Sonos tech support. No luck. He suggested I contact Netgear to see what they had to say. I’ll spare you the details but the important part was that mesh wifi does not split networks, meaning, nothing I did would insure that some of my Sonos would not end up as 5G wifi connected. If so, that might be the problem. Playing starts on all the speakers, a couple of minutes later, it stops on some, maybe comes back on, before going away. That sounds like speakers are continually being handed off to the two networks.
Their solution was an extender compatible with my Orbi RBR50. Besides extending the signal, it would allow me to split the two networks, reserving 2.4 for Sonos. My Orbi stuff is old so I asked about upgrading to something newer with the ability to split networks built in. They recommend an RAXE 500 router with and EX8000 Extender, given the size of the area I need coverage.
“Wiring to the Orbi satellites is not recommended.”
That makes sense assuming you’re referring to what Netgear customer support said (“Mesh can’t separate the networks.”) But it sounds counter to “SonosNet will build a private mesh network and ignore WiFi.”
I’m traveling again starting this next week but in absence of any new information when I return, I’ll get new gear and start over (he says envisioning a gun to the head at the thought of rebuilding his network 
).
SonosNet is a private network and is not visible with typical tools. The SONOS units request IP addresses from the router’s DHCP server. That’s why the SonosNet units are listed in router tables, but neither the router or ORBI can see or manage SonosNet wireless connections. (Note that ROAM and MOVE will always use WiFi) The router, switches, and ORBI will be aware of traffic passing through one of their wired ports, but they are unaware that some of that data might ultimately go wireless between SonosNet units.
You can monitor some details by going to Settings --> System --> About My System. WM:0 units are using SonosNet (wired or wireless) and WM:1 units are WiFi.
I’m not an ORBI user. Some users seem to be successfully using ORBI with SONOS, maybe these users offer some insights. In general mesh systems are not very kind to SONOS. A favorite trick of some mesh systems is changing the wireless channel on the fly. SONOS reacts poorly to this. As I mentioned, you can sometimes stop this by disabling “AUTO” channel selection in the mesh.
