I don’t really understand how starting an Apple Music song takes 15-30 seconds to start playing in most zones.  Why is this happening?  When I don’t rely heavily on Orbi to handle bulk traffic effortlessly and quickly, the system is basically unusable.  But then HDMI sources stream in realtime to all zones pretty well.  How is a 1MB buffer of a lossy music file harder to stream than realtime audio in 60ms?

Your options 2 and 3 still depend on some of your Orbi devices. This is not “the standard expected setup”. Expected set up on Sonosnet means all devices (apart from the wifi only ones) are wirelessly connected to the speaker that starts Sonosnet. Thsi speaker should be conected to the Base Orbi. 

#3 is exactly that.  One device (Beam) plugged into my router with Ethernet.  Nothing else plugged in.  I don’t understand how this is acceptable.  Should I make a video showing I have it set that way?  The wired zone starts right away and the rest take 10-45 seconds to start emitting audio.  Worse yet a couple of zones play the first second or two and then silence for 30 seconds.

My challenge is that doing the standard setup -- which I got setup with tech support -- is laughably unusable.  Do I have some kind of wireless interference?  That’s always the “cause” and hence why I always have ended up back to relying heavily on Orbi.  If Orbi had a way to ignore any connected devices and prioritize its own backhaul like a physical abstraction layer then it’d be perfect.  It just somehow lets packets go to Sonos that shouldn’t go to them.  Sonos should be on a VLAN and all of these issues would go away.

Ok for serious -- I just set it up 100% exactly as I am supposed to.  Beam is plugged into my router with an Ethernet cable and every other speaker is disconnected with wifi on.  I tried all 3 channels, with 20/40 and 20mhz on my home wifi.  It just doesn’t work on all of my 9 zones, spanning only 18 Sonos nodes.  3 are movable (BT compatible) and off right now.  How many zones does Sonos support simultaneously 100% over SonosNet?  How can I diagnose what is wrong?  Every single connection point box in the status page is green.  The lowest number I see in or out is 45.  My physical layout is so simple that every device is connecting to the beam directly with no additional hops.

My Beam is a secondary node with everything else being a tertiary node.  Is this how it should be?  Will only a Boost be a Root Node?

Whenever I start plugging devices into my Orbi’s with wifi off, the system works much better, but some devices vanish randomly depending on where I am at home so I’m guessing some requests are getting sent but dropped.  Might also have to do with my surrounds/sub being plugged into a headless switch.  Tomorrow I may try all that I have (keeping wifi on everywhere) and then just adding ethernet cables on top of everything as-is to see if that shows any improvement.  If I could see all 9 zones working flawlessly (hearing the first chord of songs, fast adjustments/seeking, and 99%+ no drop outs) I would have a lot more confidence.  I don’t think there is much wireless interference around me because few people use the internet that much.  I do genuinely need some support on if I’m trying to do something physically unsupported or is something just wrong?  I keep expanding my system but maybe I’ve just gone too far and need to return everything still within the window.  Getting to span 2 or 3 zones is handy but not really good enough.

For extra interested readers/smart people: can someone explain what a Sonos speaker does when it’s plugged in via Ethernet to a mesh satellite (AC3000 Orbi Satellite)?  Is it actually connecting as that device/IP address?  Or is it virtualizing itself to get to the Root Node?  I ask because I see MAC addresses that are 1 character position off so I’m guessing there is a different MAC address for wireless and wired BUT I only ever see the primary one in my router table.  So the secondary one must be for Sonos internally?  The issue that I will have is that randomly some devices will just appear or vanish, depending on the Orbi I’m connected to (making this guess based on walking to the other side of my home will make them re-appear).  What is the logic here?  It’s unfortunate that the Orbi backhaul cannot 100% replicate/mimic a hardwired connection so nothing is different.  Clearly something is different and there is a prioritization stack (to non-Sonos) traffic that leads to devices vanishing or requests getting dropped.  Just trying to get a more fundamental understanding of the behavior so I can try to troubleshoot and devise a complete solution.  I have still yet to identify any solution to my system, be it exactly as Sonos intended, or the opposite of what was intended.  My system is just very unstable and useless beyond 2 or 3 zones.  It’s not okay, in my opinion, that it takes each speaker 30-60 seconds to sync up a lossy audio song and start playing continuously, and frankly that’s even best case scenario that rarely is able to happen with my 18 nodes.  I want my system rock solid with bandwidth and capacity to grow as my whims desire.

Has anyone bought 32 Sonos Ones and put them in a room out in the middle of the desert/nowhere to see if they play flawlessly over SonosNet?

Is your primary Orbi hub currently acting as a router, or are all your Orbi Hubs bridged (in AP mode)? If one is acting as your router, then switch it and try the Orbi setup in AP mode instead, ideally with some or all hubs wired back to your main router (with its own WiFi adapters switched off) .. then try running your Sonos products on the Orbi WiFi signal instead of SonosNet and see if that perhaps may work better for you. That’s how I run my own 31 node system using Plume WiFi-5 mesh and it works well for me. Three out of four of my Plume Hubs hang off 16 port unmanaged switches, which are each wired back to the main router and are located front/middle/rear of premises and cover two floors. 

I am able to switch all over to SonosNet by wiring either a Boost or a Sonos Port to the main router and if I do that I also cable my Arc and two Beams to their nearest wired switch too and that works fine aswell, but for some reason I have two One (gen-1’s) in a remote location that don’t always work well when on SonosNet, as they try to connect direct to the root bridge (port/boost) when internal doors are open, but then may struggle when doors are closed with people milling about between rooms - so I currently prefer the system running on the plume WiFi signal.

So that’s perhaps a suggestion for you to consider, if your home setup perhaps allows for such a configuration.

I presume you've been round the house with a WiFi Analyser to check for interference?.

Apparently Microwaves are bad for 2.4ghz interference I've read?.

I only have 7 devices but they work perfectly on SonosNet.

I've tried to put everything we can on 5ghz and leave the 2.4ghs for Sonos and our Arlo cameras.

If you are on S2 my be worth trying WiFi only on 5ghz, no Sonos wired direct to a hub/ switch/ router?.

Seems hard work getting Sonos to coexist with mesh networks.

Hi. I haven't read all of this thread, but one phrase from the OP caught my eye.; "with WiFi off". Have you set any of your speakers to "Disable Wifi". If you have, please tick "Enable Wi-Fi ". Otherwise you could be totally sabotaging your system  

Unfortunately you’d have to do all this background reading to grasp the full gory saga:

My Orbi’s are all setup as one unit (Base + 4 satellites) and all are in AP Mode with DHCP disabled.  Routing/DHCP are handled by a Synology Mesh Router (with its wifi disabled).  Yes, I have a separate modem, router/DHCP, WiFi AP.  Each does one task only.

What device can I buy to check interference.  I’d hope you all give me more credit than that, I’m not running my microwave while I’m testing.  Plus, nothing else is happening on my network.  My security cameras are all handled by Orbi’s 5GHz backhaul and very few devices even both to hit the 2.4GHz network.  What is so odd is that symptoms I continuously get are: HomeKit apple tvs go “No response,” my Hue lighting quits working, and requests just fail when I start setting things up some of my more complex ways.

So I’m trying to get back to basics and just confirm that the way Sonos intends this to be setup does not work.  I mean I’ve had Sonos since like 2016 and never has it worked as expected.  But it still seems like the best networked speakers.  I just settled for 2 or 3 zones simultaneously and called it good.  Then I expanded my system more and decided that I wanted to try to solve the issues.

I still haven’t gotten an answer.  If I play a lossy audio file to 2 nodes, does it broadcast that 500Kb initial buffer data once?  What if I play it to 10?  What about 20?  Does it broadcast the 500Kb once or 20 times?  I had hoped that it was clever enough to have shared wireless certificates where each device could hear all traffic (like OTA broadcast TV) but given how the system crumbles I’m not so sure.  I don’t even bother trying to play my FLAC library.  I’m still perplexed how it’s so challenging to push 500Kb to a few nodes.  So I said it, tell me what I need to buy to diagnose this.  But also, has anyone put 32 Sonos Ones in a room and successfully played them where they sound like a wired system with zero drop outs, hearing the first chord, etc.?

Talk about your larger systems that are all wireless: if you search Apple Music and play Song 1, do you hear it start within 5 seconds, hear the first chord out of every speaker, and then no drop outs?  Right now I do hear the first chord out of most speakers, and within a few seconds nodes go silent.  After about a minute most will recover.  But WTF???  Am I asking for too much that 18 Sonos speakers all sound like wired systems?  It’s also important to me that they have fast/low latency connections because I would prefer the volume adjustments and any changes to tracks to all occur at the same time, that doesn’t seem true right now.  Even if it pre-shares the action and takes the action at some number of ms in the future, so they can all do it at once.  i.e. when I used to do AirPlay 2, it just bugs me to no end to hear a stereo pair change volume or start/stop at different moments.  This is what led me to running an Ethernet cable between a stereo pair.  For starters, is this even officially supported?  If not, why not?  Why can’t the first actually take over and just run the 2nd as a secondary, so your stereo can be/appear as a single node, thereby increasing node capacity?  I expected the adjustments to be closer to instant, but is it sending the data twice to that one speaker (if the 2nd has wifi off)?

These questions started coming up because it doesn’t perform like I want it to and so if I know more about how this all technically works I might be more able to accept concepts as not possible that I have been trying.  But then again, when I had it all implemented as I saw best, it does work great!  The rest of my network quits then and sometimes Sonos nodes just disappear.  I spent days diagnosing my Orbi system and getting an RMA back in like 2016 to which I later realized the issue was caused by Sonos.  Do I just need to get a managed switch for every one?  I just need Sonos on its own VLAN where it is protected traffic and can’t interact with anything else for any reason.

This forum stuff is all good, i spent years in the J. River forums from like 2003-2014 or so.  Brings me back.

So it’s not just a Sonos problem?
 

Are there forums for those other troublesome items, and have they been able to offer any advice? 
 

Will things work with your network set up in a less complex way?

Sonos is causing these problems.  My first question shows 3 configurations.  The ones that Sonos plays flawlessly lead to network instability.  Right now, about 50% of my network requests from my iPad fail because they travel down the Sonos network and die.  I just had to jump on my phone hot spot to even post this right now.  But if I do the SonosNet as suggested (one Ethernet device, everything else wireless) I can’t play an mp3 in more than ~3 zones at a time (I mean synced).  So just trying to find a solution that makes my 9 zones play flawlessly while not destroying my network.  That’s why I asked if managed switched might help because I could put sonos on is own VLAN so it can’t break everything else.

Does really nobody know if playing an mp3 to 2 or 10 zones sends the data twice or ten times?  Why is this such a difficult question?  If it sends the data 10 times, then it is no wonder why everything crumbles beyond a couple of zones.

My conclusion so far is that my system is too large to be run entirely on SonosNet — for whatever reason, yes I know there are larger systems out there.  The way that it will perform very well or exceptionally, is it several speakers are handled by Orbi’s 5GHz backhaul.  But that leads to network requests, at Orbi satellites, round robin getting sent to the attached Sonos speaker (instead over Orbi backhaul).  If wifi is on, the Sonos network slowly handles those requests and gets them to the router/internet.  If wifi is off, the requests get dropped.  No success or failure, just radio silence.  This is what leads to random instability where device requests just go silent.

When Sonos are all plugged into Ethernet where able, iMessages just don’t show messages for 10-120 seconds.  Web pages spin, loading loading loading.  Requests just stall, spin spin spin.  How is this a thing that can happen?  What is a way to prevent Sonos from breaking the network when you use what is there.  Can it be told to not handle non-Sonos anything ever?  No other devices should ever send any requests over its network.  Only its traffic and nothing else, ever, for any reason?

Why does Sonos accept network requests as if it has a way to fulfill them?

But audio *only in this configuration* plays as it should.  Everywhere, correctly, without dropouts.

Maybe this Sonos patent (link below), in regards to identifying a group coordinator for a group of networked playback devices, may help you to find some of the answers you are perhaps looking for…

https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2017/0192739.html

I don’t think the coordinator is the issue.  It always jumps to the best choice anyway, it’s really just a simple SonosNet setup that doesn’t work vs. plugging everything into Orbi, which makes audio play great but the rest of my network requests die.  I’ll read through that patent though.  Thanks!

I read it as… once the coordinator is chosen, it distributes the audio file received from the source (such as Spotify etc.) to each of the players in the group and coordinates the synchronised playback of the distributed audio, so all play in perfect sync. Clearly with that sort of method, a user can then go onto remove the coordinator from the group (just as an example) at which point another device in the group takes up the GC role and playback can continue because the track has been distributed to each one of the players - if that maybe answers the question you were asking in your earlier post. At least that’s what I gathered from quickly glancing through that patent, but perhaps take your time to read through it in greater detail.

@benn600,

Admittedly I’m still surprised, particularly as you have all of your Orbi devices operating in AP bridge mode, that just wiring your Sonos Boost only to your Synology router hasn’t worked for you. That’s with all other Sonos devices uncabled & their wireless adapters enabled and using a SonosNet channel not in use by any of your Orbi Hubs. 

That sort of setup usually works well with Sonos for most people using WiFi mesh systems in AP mode.

Or similarly, if you were to bridge the synology router instead and put that into what I usually call ‘modem mode’ and use the Orbi primary device as the main router, then wiring the Sonos Boost to that primary Orbi Hub usually works well too for many Sonos users. Although it’s worthwhile remembering to not wire anything Sonos to the Orbi Satellite Hubs in that situation, or if for any reason you have to, then switch off it’s WiFi (but do not ever do that with a Sonos HT device).

Anyhow, I’m just baffled why neither ‘wired’ setup will work in your case.

As mentioned much earlier though, I don’t use either of those two methods for my own Sonos system, as I just choose to run all on my WiFi mesh signal instead.

Somewhat like you, I use several (Plume) WiFi mesh hubs bridged in AP mode. Each hub is attached to its own 16 port switch (unmanaged) located front/back/middle of the Home across two floors.

The three switches are wired directly back to the main router (with its own WiFi adapters disabled). So I choose to not have any wired Sonos devices at all and just connect all Sonos products to the plume combined 2.4Ghz/5Ghz signal and that has always worked really well for me. 

However I’ve not used an Orbi mesh system to comment on how well it might work with Sonos/other products like Hue lighting etc. Most users though seem to prefer a wired Sonos Boost setup (as described earlier) that’s from reading through the various threads here in the community and elsewhere online.

If I need to just get other hardware to see if that fixes it, I’m willing to do that.  Boost really just seems to have an inferior antenna in it vs my Beam, I just tested it again and instead of 0 or 1 nodes turning yellow, 5 did.  Kinda disappointing.

I end up being unable to ping certain Sonos nodes as I walk around.  They vanish and cannot be connected to, the zone disappears from my app and trying to load the status page fails.  But Orbi sees the devices and lists them in the connected devices.  There must be some kind of hop occurring over the Sonos mesh as well and some loop backs are getting blocked, thus dropping those packets.

The simple one wired device with SonosNet works fine up to about 6 zones, and then tips over.  Interestingly enough it’s the 7th and 8th zones that are stereo pairs which happen to be adjacent to Orbi satellites with Ethernet already ran.  I just keep unplugging it to try different configurations.

I think my next options could be trying new network hardware or switching back to a different networked audio system that I used to use before Sonos.  Just seems like these issues have to be happening for other people and why more sophisticated configurations aren’t natively supported boggles my mind.  Unless I truly have something unique and specific that is wreaking havoc.

I’m trying plugging everything into Orbi, with wifi off on everything, and using my Orbi wifi for all wireless nodes, so no SonosNet.  Will see how that works.

Okay!  I switched back to Home WiFi mode.  Every device that can plug into Orbi is plugged in with wifi off.  Everything else is connected to my Orbi home wifi network.  NO SonosNet.  Yes!  It works perfectly!  Very fast starts, no drop outs once started.

Is there no supported or valid scenario to run an Ethernet cable between a stereo pair or surrounds/rear sub?  I noticed with SonosNet that I was able to connect devices and have one handle communication as a proxy for the others.  With home wifi, this just doesn’t work.  Each speaker is itself one and only one connected node.  It seems like that should be a very well supported mode.  I still have the Ethernet cable running between each stereo pair and surrounds/sub that are able to have it, but wifi has to be on, so I expect that nothing is actually going over the Ethernet cable.