Connecting wireless hard drive

Hi @ctfeher 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

First of all, I have to mention that having a WiFi-connected hard drive isn’t recommended. It’s location is irrelevant, so it’s best to connect it to your router with an ethernet cable.

However, seeing as your S1 system is still able to connect and play, I think it likely that the issue has to do with the SMB (the file-sharing protocol) versions that the two Sonos systems are utilising - S1 uses only SMB v1, whereas S2 will use SMB v2/3. 

I suspect you will need to log in to your WD settings and adjust the SMB version that the device uses.

As Windows won’t connect either, however, there may be something else wrong. Perhaps you have a mesh WiFi and a router? Or you have WiFi extenders?

Or, perhaps the router and drive just need a reboot, though I suspect that has already been tried.

I hope this helps.

Corry

The hard drive is connected by the ethernet cable.  And version 2 seems to connect to the drive, it’s just telling me that the path I’m entering (the name of which is a bit of a guess) doesn’t exist.  Once it seemed to connect, but nothing appeared even after reorganizing the library.  Maybe that’s the SMB version?

Hi @ctfeher 

I can’t help you with the path, but it should be the same path that S1 successfully connects to - which you’ve obviously been trying.

I just now looked up your previous diagnostics and it looks like the issue is likely to be an IP address conflict on your network. If the local IP address of your WD Drive ends in 231 or 178, then I am correct. The best thing to do would be to go into your router/mesh settings and reserve IP addresses for devices that are permanently on your network, such as Sonos devices and the WD Drive and then reboot your router/mesh.

I hope this helps.

what does reserve IP addresses mean?

And does this mean you don’t think it’s the SMB issue?

Hi @ctfeher 

Your network router runs a software module called a DHCP server, which is supposed to supply unique IP addresses to devices trying to connect to the network. For some reason, the same IP address has been handed out to a Sonos device and something non-Sonos on your network. Twice (two Sonos devices are reporting conflicts).

Reserving IP addresses means setting your router up so that it saves particular addresses for particular devices, and those addresses then never go into a pool of available addresses that can be used for new connecting devices.

How you go about doing this depends on the router you are using, and the setup you have. I see in the case notes that you refused remote assistance - I understand why, but this would have been a way for us to do this for you, if it occurred to the agent to do so.

You could just reboot your router by turning it off for at least 30 seconds, and then reboot your Sonos devices and your WD Drive, but that does nothing to prevent this from happening again.

It think this needs to be addressed before there’s any point in trying anything else. There could still be an issue with SMB, but we won’t know until we get rid of the IP conflict. What I think is currently happening is that the speaker performing the indexing (Den) is resolving the path into an IP address, but when it connects to the IP address of the drive and asks for a list of files to index, it instead is connecting to another device with the same IP address (which should be unique on the network) as the drive and the reply it receives goes along the line of “I don’t know what you are talking about”.

I looked a bit deeper and it seems the IP of the drive ends in 121 (or, at least, that it what the Sonos system is being told it is), which is not the IP of any of the Sonos devices, but it might be conflicting with another device, seeing as Sonos devices are reporting conflict with their IPs.

If you have a router and a mesh WiFi, this could be a very important point - please let me know if you do.

Our set up is complicated.  We have an AT&T modem that has a router, but we don't use that because it isn't strong enough. So that goes into an Amplifi router, which has 3 mesh units.  But then our security system added a Netgear extender to support an outside camera.  That extender is in the same room as the 2 Ones and the subwoofer.  They worker for a while but now don’t.

Interestingly, my Sonos2 App won't work in that room either.  I have to go into a differnt room to control anything.

I’m happy to allow someone to control and set this up.  The fellow that asked about that wasn't looking at this, he was only looking at the file path issue. 

Amplifi sent this article about bridge mode, which is what your tech said I needed.

To put the AmpliFi router in bridge mode, please refer to this article https://help.amplifi.com/hc/en-us/articles/220979347-Enabling-Bridge-Mode 
 

 

Hi @ctfeher 

It sounds like you need to configure the Amplifi device to not run it’s DHCP server - simply disabling or not connecting to AT&T’s WiFi isn’t enough. When new devices connect, they are likely getting two responses to the request for an IP address - they listen to the first to arrive. I recommend you search for instructions on how to place your particular Amplifi device into Bridge mode (which disables DHCP). It usually involves a companion app and is reasonably simple to do. You may lose some other functions the Amplifi has while the AT&T device runs the network.

The alternative would be to put the AT&T device into modem mode (if that’s an option - I’m in the UK and not familiar) or manually disable it’s DHCP server (and everything else). If you do this, you should never connect anything to it other than the main mesh node.

Unfortunately, our technicians aren’t really supposed to help with this kind of problem because we’d need remote access to do so and if something goes wrong that cuts off your internet, we can’t access your network and so we can’t fix anything, leaving you in a worse position than when you called. It didn’t always stop me - which is why I mentioned it - but I wasn’t supposed to do it. For this reason, if you require assistance with this I recommend you contact Amplifi, or recruit a friend with technical knowhow. The first option should be simple though.

After reconfiguring your network, reboot everything that connects to it.

It sounds like the extender will be an issue. They’re not supported by Sonos because of this kind of behaviour. I assume when your phone connects to it when you are in the room, that is the reason you can’t then connect to your Sonos system, though it surprises me to hear you can’t connect to the Sonos speakers in that room either. One option is to purchase an additional mesh node for the security camera and speakers there, to replace the extender. I assume you can buy them separately.

I would first try wiring one of your Sonos S2 devices (not the Sub) to the main Amplifi router, if that’s possible. Sonos will then create it’s own mesh network, repeated by each Sonos device, that has a good chance of spanning your home, though you may want to move your main WiFi off of channel 1 to get the best performance. Make sure to keep the wired device at least 1m from the router, and all Sonos devices 1m from the mesh nodes. This will not affect your S1 devices.

I hope this helps.

Hi @ctfeher 

I think we were typing at the same time, but I took longer.

That is exactly what you need to do.

I will try it and let you know.  But that doesn't answer the path question, does it?  Also, will that solve the problem with the units being connected to the Netgear booster?