I'm doing a renovation at the cottage, and added 3 Sonos:CONNECT to drive in-ceiling, porch and wall speakers. Initially I hard wired a PLAY-1 to the back of the router, and that enabled the Sonos network to the rest. It worked, but sometimes dropped sync between them.
I finally got around to hard wiring the new Sonos:CONNECT. I daisy chained 2 CONNECT to the router, and initially let the other CONNECT and PLAY-1 use the sonos wireless network. I then ran a new Cat6 line to the 3rd CONNECT that isn't located with the other 2, and tested the line. The hardwire line worked great with the computer, but as soon as I plugged in the 3rd CONNECT, the whole network crashed. No WiFi or internet anywhere.
After lots of trial and error, I discovered that if I connected this new Cat6 network as a daisy chain from the basement CONNECT, and NOT directly from a port on the router, it worked again (after rebooting the router).
What is going on? May best guess is that the Sonos:CONNECT have a very high bandwidth demand between them, and as long as they are all daisy chained together they can operate without involving the rest of the network. However, if I have two or more Sonos plugged into the router itself, then that network traffic would go through the (old slow) router which can't keep up and crashes. Right?
I have several other Sonos systems to go, and can't keep daisy chaining them together. I wan't to understand what the requirements are.
Do you need a 10GB hub to connect the Sonos? Other suggestions?
Answered
Hardwiring Sonos:CONNECT takes down network
Best answer by MikeV
John's likely on the right path here. I'd check Sonos' Incompatible network hardware list and see if your router is listed there. If it's not, check through the settings - even the advanced ones - to see if there's an option to enable Spanning Tree Protocol (STP). There might not be, as it's not something usually needed on home networks (Sonos needs it so it can properly determine the best wireless/wired paths for its devices).
If your router isn't on the hardware list, I'd submit a diagnostic from your system and post the confirmation number, along with some info on your router (the manufacturer, provider, and model number). Sonos might need to add it to their list if there's no way to get it to pass the STP traffic that Sonos needs. Daisy-chaining works because all of your Sonos devices are using one port on the router, so they're all still able to communicate with each other without any problems.
If your router isn't on the hardware list, I'd submit a diagnostic from your system and post the confirmation number, along with some info on your router (the manufacturer, provider, and model number). Sonos might need to add it to their list if there's no way to get it to pass the STP traffic that Sonos needs. Daisy-chaining works because all of your Sonos devices are using one port on the router, so they're all still able to communicate with each other without any problems.
This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.
Enter your E-mail address. We'll send you an e-mail with instructions to reset your password.
