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I have recently changed our home Wifi to TP Link Omada as our existing Wifi didnt reach around the home, I am planning on adding some managed switches too which I think will help with our sonos setup in the long run.

 

I currently have a number of devices hard wired (wifi off), a boost and some on wifi (should be sonosnet)

 

We have had performance issues on and off over the years and hard wiring some of the sonos appears to have fixed it, the office and nursery speakers are hard wired as they are the furthest from the Boost. Would an additional boost help?

 

Since changed to Omada APs, our devices connected by WiFi arent able to play anything, the wired devices are still functioning, these are currently connected to dumb switches.

 

Our network matrix is as below:

 

 

Any advice, suggestions are appreciated. 

I plan to move the location of the boost again as a first port of call. Does anyone use TP Link Omada and know the best settings to use?

That’s great.  Thanks for posting back.  I’m glad changing the baby monitor worked as it would have been a shame to have had to get rid of the baby.

You could try changing the channel on the Zigbee, or moving it physically further from the router and Boost if cable and set up allow.  For a while in the recent past I had the Zigbee hub connected to the Ethernet port on one of my wireless Sonos speakers, and it worked fine.

Well it's a question of priorities!

Again, try powering off the hubs temporarily and see if anything makes a radical difference.

“Office” still appears to be a maverick. It could be that it’s so far from any SonosNet nodes that it’s fallen back to WiFi.

Maverick! I like that term…  It shouldn’t really be too far from the Boost but there are walls etc in betweem

 

You could try changing the channel on the Zigbee, or moving it physically further from the router and Boost if cable and set up allow.  For a while in the recent past I had the Zigbee hub connected to the Ethernet port on one of my wireless Sonos speakers, and it worked fine.

 

Both Boost and Hubitat are currently centrally located, I may be better moving the Boost, I will experiment with this and report back in the coming days/week

That’s great.  Thanks for posting back.  I’m glad changing the baby monitor worked as it would have been a shame to have had to get rid of the baby.

 

I laughed too much at this!

The latest matrix is:

not happy.

Two apparently wired devices (Nursery and Lounge) still have no wireless content. And there are two root bridges, suggesting fragmented spanning trees. And Office doesn’t seem to have any STP status either. It looks like the system’s broken in two.

Just dropping back in to say thanks for the help I have received on this post!

My Network Matrix is looking much healthier since changing the baby monitor.

 

 

The interference near the Boost is likely to be the Zigbee Hub, and the Lounge is possible Nvidia Shield as that connects via Bluetooth to it’s remote and gamepad

In my experience a baby monitor completed hosed the entire system. They’re notorious. I guess it was a rather crude use of the entire 2.4GHz band, as it evidently sprayed noise everywhere.

Remove the Omada WiFi credentials in the Sonos App network settings (they’re not needed when running all on SonosNet) and try to set a SonosNet channel that is not in use by the Omada network.

There appears to be a Roam.

An update after todays tweaking, Sonos seems happy, been playing music in all rooms as a test and various grouped rooms and no dropouts. Best performance in a long time!

 

However, our baby monitor now keeps disconnecting and beeping! Ordering a new one… an old school DECT one which will hopefully behave and then all is good

Boost is in a happier place.

The next pinch point is going to be Lounge, since 5 other nodes are depending upon it. Lounge itself is experiencing some interference, and the connection to Bathroom (on which Guest Bedroom in turn depends) is rather weak.

Office has jumped onto the WiFi (WM:1 in the controller’s About), quite possibly on 5GHz. 

Wouldn’t having wifi and wired enabled create loops?

 

I currently have managed switches with STP enabled and configured with the appropriate values depending on where the switches are in the chain

 

No. Enabling STP in the switches will take care of that. I have both managed and unmanaged switches and no loops. I’d wire SONOS to the switches and avoid the router -- just in case it does not handle STP well.

Managed switches are not a problem if properly setup. Use STP, not RSTP. Many managed switches default to RSTP.

With respect to the Network Matrix shown, signal strength’s are mostly not great, but easily within the usable range, however, interference is high. I suspect that even WiFi is suffering somewhat. You should be using  only 20-MHz channels 1, 6,and 11. Do you have any ZigBee or Bluetooth devices near the red units?

These are mostly older SONOS devices because the latest devices do not share data with the Network Matrix. I’m not suggesting that older units are a problem, only that wireless issues with newer product are much harder for users to self diagnose because the Network Matrix will become less and less useful as new product is added. 

I’ll agree with everyone else that turning OFF the SONOS radios is generally counter productive because it might limit the flexibility of SonosNet. to work around issues.

 

Update: Wire as many players as is practical.

I used to have a number of players wired in but believed this wasn’t the best practice, however I am now considering giving it another go.

When wired, with wireless disabled things were much happier but not perfect, however this was back when we had a baby monitor, so now that has gone, I may revert to some of them wired.

 

Dropouts are creeping back in, local and cloud audio. The matrix is below:

Nothing has changed physically inside, and I see no new wireless networks from neighbours.

 

 

I’ll wire some in over the coming days and see what happens, I will also move my boost again!

 

A couple of questions:

 

  1. For ones that I wire, should I disable Wifi?
  2. Should the boost be connected to my router (gateway) or the nearest switch to the router (lowest STP value) - or shouldn’t it matter too much? 

Nothing has changed physically inside, and I see no new wireless networks from neighbours.

 

Something has changed, but is not visible in your scanner.

If all of the players are wired, BOOST is redundant.

  1. no.
  2. it shouldn’t matter if the switch itself is unmanaged. If it isn’t, then the router itself is the appropriate choice. 
     
  3. have you called in to Sonos for guidance at all?

Networks are not static. There’s a lot of outside influences that also affect internal to the network things.

From my untrained eye (which anyone feel free to correct), there’s a bunch of interference around your BRIDGE and Office. I’d certainly be double checking the wifi interference FAQ for possible solutions, and likely try changing the SonosNet channel in use. It could be impacted by other sources outside of your control, such as neighbors (this happened to me before!) or even worse, sunspots, electrical devices going out of spec, etc. 

“Office” still appears to be a maverick. It could be that it’s so far from any SonosNet nodes that it’s fallen back to WiFi.

Maybe turn off 5GHz wifi (or all wifi?) temporarily to see if that will get it to join SonosNet?  Maybe then it will stick, particularly if the interference picture is further improved.

“Office” still appears to be a maverick. It could be that it’s so far from any SonosNet nodes that it’s fallen back to WiFi.

Things are looking better / less red with the devices being power cycled.

This is still with baby monitor off, will turn that back on in 30 minutes

Something in the lounge appears to be source of the most interference… there is a Logitech Harmony Hub, Echo Show, Nvidia Shield, and the under stairs cupboard where the smart home hubs and boost live. This is probably 5m from the sonos lounge

 

 

Again, try powering off the hubs temporarily and see if anything makes a radical difference.

Good suggestion! That will be one for later in the week when time allows… As it now appears they are creating some interference.

 

If I move the boost should this ideally be centrally located in the house?

Actually SonosNet might be worse. However if you powercycle the Office unit it may rejoin SonosNet. If that doesn't work, try changing the SonosNet channel back and forth. The nuclear option is to factory reset and re-add. 

I would guess it would be worse due to the location of the speaker… However it may connect through the Kitchen, I will power cycle and see.

Already gone nuclear on this one today so no issues doing so again

Actually SonosNet might be worse. However if you powercycle the Office unit it may rejoin SonosNet. If that doesn't work, try changing the SonosNet channel back and forth. The nuclear option is to factory reset and re-add. 

Baby monitor back on! I think I have found the culprit…

 

 

Is there a way to get my Office speaker to use Sonosnet rather than WiFi? Assume that would be better...

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