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Help on improving my home setup - (Omada wifi / another boost?)

W
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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?

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Best answer by John B 1 August 2022, 13:10

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66 replies

J

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.

J

Well it's a question of priorities!

W
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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

W
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“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!

ratty

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.

J

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

buzz

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.

ratty

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.

ratty

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

ratty

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.

ratty

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.

W
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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

buzz

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.

W
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I have cabled in one Sonos to the switch nearest my router, lowest STP value, and getting more drop outs than before and notifications of network loops

 

Next step is to contact Sonos.

 

Wife is currently preferring to use Alexa devices as we have now got them playing local music using Plex and it can do Spotify and Amazon Music without drop outs

W
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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? 
Airgetlam
  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?
Bruce
buzz

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

buzz

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

 

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

ratty

“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.

J

“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.

W
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  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?

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

 

I havent yet called Sonos but think that is worth doing now as I am struggling

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

 

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

Yes, it is most likely something external rather than internal so out of my control

W
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Hi. Are you saying that you have 'wifi disabled' set on your wired devices? If so then you have semi crippled SonosNet. You should start by re-enabling the wireless radios on those devices.

 

Yes i did disable Wifi on the wired devices, my previous wi-fi setup (BT Whole Home) provided very poor Sonos performance so I had to wire some devices in to get sound in some rooms. I will re-enable WiFi on my wired devices.

 

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

 

STP is enabled, not RSTP. This was the first thing I tried.

 

Do you have any ZigBee or Bluetooth devices near the red units?

 

In the kitchen I have a zigbee switch near the speaker, boost is near my Hubitat hub with zigbee receiver so this may be the first thing to move!

ratty

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.

 

Do you mean the devices connected by WiFi or via SonosNet? I can see just one Roam on WiFi.

Apart from the nasty ambient RF noise levels the matrix shows a SonosNet with a distinctly suboptimal mesh. The Boost is supporting just one node directly, and it takes 3 hops to reach Guest Bedroom (Boost -> Kitchen -> Bathroom -> Guest Bedroom). Re-enabling the radio on the two wired devices with it currently disabled may improve things.

 

I have to ask: why Omada? It’s a business solution with a high level of complexity, not designed for home use. In particular you could find that Sonos devices on WiFi are inaccessible due to subnetting or isolation between network segments. Configuration tweaks may be available in the Omada management console to address this.

W
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I meant on the SonosNet devices, Wifi is the term the Sonos App uses so I chose to use it here :)

 

I chose Omada as it works well for me at work, I am an IT Infrastructure Engineer so am familiar with the setup but translating it to getting a good setup for Sonos is where I am getting stuck.

We use HP Aruba, Omada and Ubiquiti at different sites at work and I preferred the Omada system over the others, so wanted to see if it would improve things at home.

 

My previous Wi-Fi coverage was poor, so I wanted to install Omada to install the coverage around the house, which it has done, but given the issues I am getting with Sonos I may revert back. I can still return my kit and not lose out! Which I am leaning towards, as the system is too complex for the needs at home. I would have liked to add VLANs for my IOT devices but this may be overkill… Something that works solidly is better. Possibly a better Mesh Wifi that the previous BT solution as that was poor at best!

 

What I am seeing today after some changes:

 

  1. Re-enabling “Wi-Fi” (as its called in the Sonos App) to re-enable Sonosnet introduces loops on my wired devices
  2. Removing ethernet and going Wi-Fi only on these devices, works for a while after re-adding the speakers, but they soon lose connection again.

So in hindsight, If i was to start again… what would the best route be?

 

Wireless from the router isn’t good enough to give coverage everywhere, BT Whole Home Wifi performs pretty poor but did have less issues than with Omada.

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