There’s likely an additional delay to relay the surround signal through the extra processing of the router, rather than the direct (and not SonosNet) connection between the soundbar and the surround speakers on the hidden WiFi connection. Just an FYI. 

If your router is speedy enough, CPU-wise, you may not notice, but some have. it’s just an extra processing step to identify where the data packet should be routed, rather than a direct connection via the hidden signal between the two (well, three) devices. 

But SonosNet only occurs when a device, with the radio (WiFi) turned on, which is not a surround speaker or Subwoofer, is connected to the router with a cable. You could easily ‘turn off’ WiFi settings on your wired soundbar, and be turning off SonosNet. 

I suspect you know most of this, so this post is merely for others who come along.

For me turning off Sonosnet while wired would be a big help too. I’d really like to keep as much data off my WiFi as possible but have my non-wired Sonos use my WiFi instead of Sonosnet.

I do not want to disable the 5 GHz link to the Sub/Surrounds or even the WiFi, just the Sonosnet broadcasts.

Kinda like what the Era speakers do, you can wire them to Ethernet but not enable the Sonosnet link/signal/protocol, whatever it actually is.

Do the surrounds/sub use Sonosnet? I thought that was a special 5Ghz connection? The issue for the OP is that if you want to connect a soundbar via ethernet, you can’t stop Sonosnet being created by the soundbar for other Sonos devices. If you turn off the Wifi on a soundbar, you can’t connect the surrounds/sub, so being able to have WiFi with no Sonosnet would be useful on the soundbars specifically. 

Sort of linked here is that I’d also like the system to remember if it was setup initially on WiFi (not Sonosnet) and then remember that if you plug in a speaker, again not enabling Sonosnet automatically. If I’ve chosen WiFi, Sonosnet should not be automatically created without asking. This would aid problem determination by allowing you to see if a speakers WiFi connection really is dodgy. As it stands, if a user quite reasonably wires a speaker when having issues, they create Sonosnet (possibly without knowing) and then create themselves a whole different set of issues that could leave them worse off than when they started. It would also mean you could plug in multiple speakers without creating broadcast storms. 

Hi @furacaopr 

Thank you - I've marked this thread as a feature request and it will be seen by the relevant teams for consideration. Keep the ideas coming!

Thanks, @Corry P 

@Ian_S , my understanding is that SonosNet is a disparate ‘system’ for connecting music between primary music speakers than the ‘system’ (not SonosNet) used to connect bonded speakers, which includes Subwoofers and Surround speakers. This was more evident back when Sonos’ Android controller was able to connect to the SonosNet signal, something they took away quite a while ago. A user was never able to ‘see’ the bonded connection signal, while they could ‘see’ the SonosNet signal. 

And the behaviour of the two types is different, too. A SonosNet signal is part of a mesh system, that sends information in many directions simultaneously. A bonded speaker can only ‘receive’ information, one of the reasons (I think) that line ins on surround devices is turned off, as there is no way to ‘send’ that data back to the parent device. And also why you can’t use a Sub or a surround speaker as a SonosNet hub.

Thats the function, anyway. I’m no programmer, and haven’t looked at the code to know for sure. 

Hi @Airgetlam 

That was my understanding for about 5 years too! I was recently informed that the 5GHz connection from a Home Theatre primary device is also referred to as SonosNet (well, by the engineers, anyway), but as it is on 5GHz and non-bonded players seek SonosNet on 2.4GHz, it does not act like it. In addition, speakers connecting to the 5GHz signal do not rebroadcast it.

In my opinion, it makes the labelling of the broadcast as “SonosNet” largely irrelevant, but there you go. I don’t recommend referring to it as such either - it will only serve to confuse.

Bonded speakers are put into a state that used to be called something that is now seen to be politically incorrect, but they are basically doing nothing that they are not specifically told to do by the HT primary, so they don’t perform any of the functions you mentioned. I think this is an intended limitation for the purpose of increasing the likelihood of reliable playback on the satellites.

I hope this helps.

But seriously, it makes sense that a high volume of data going from the surround speakers back to the main sound bar (or amp), while still having traffic the other direction and under the same time constraints is probably going to be significantly less reliable. 

For that non politically correct term, I try to use parent/child, instead. 

Now I need to get over my prejudices about ‘bonded’ speakers not being on SonosNet. Makes me angry ;)

Hi @Airgetlam 

I was trying to think of a decent alternative but basically gave up! Parent/child is as good as any that isn’t the obvious but unacceptable one, I guess