MOVE not visible on the app via a wifi extender

If your matrix had green/yellow in the signal strengths then a wireless Boost would be ignored as a “bridge”.

Yes, there could be other underlying issues only visible to Support from the full diagnostic. Unfortunately we had those toys taken away from /support/review a few years back.

@John B yep, wiring an AP onto a SonosNet backhaul could be the next step. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. Let’s see, once the problem is fully characterised.

@johnb 

I have 2 wifi PLE’s, but usually only one is used with the Move.  I don’t think we are being very demanding with the Move.  It stays in the same place near the router for the bulk of the time and we occasionally move it onto a terrace just outside the back door.  It started to become an issue when I was considering placing the Move permanently into another room connected via a PLE and then taking it into the garden from there. 

@ratty 

The Matrix is only all yellow/green when I use the Boost as a bridge.  Mind you, what you say is very interesting, because occasionally when I have tried it this way, Sonos ignores the Boost in favour of an inferior (orange) connection via another player.  I then have to force it back to using the Boost by turning off the other player so that green/yellow is back everywhere again.

As @ratty has pointed out, it IS asking a lot of the Move if the PLEs are not passing all the traffic that Sonos requires, bearing in mind that making a standalone Smart TV (for example) work is trivial compared with a multidevice system that requires constant contact between devices.

Hence my suggestion that if this cannot be made to work, an alternative to PLEs might be better.

This is a digression from the Move/PLE problem, and hence another topic really, but SonosNet will organise its topology so as to minimise ‘root path cost’. This means that it will try and stick to a single hop to a wireless player if it can. It’s only when the direct signal strength drops into the low 20s (well into orange territory) that it would start to favour a two-hop path via another wireless node. Generally orange isn’t an issue, depending on the level of transient RF interference.

I am interested in the outcome of this problem I was thinking of buying a Roam for my garden shed which due to distance will need a Powerline to get a wifi signal.

Not sure I can add much to the discussion but the following may (or may not) be helpful. I have some TP-Link powerline and for the most part they have been successful. The PA 281 I believe is quite an old bit of kit so I wonder if that can be removed whilst you do your testing. I am using Sonosnet and as I write I am successfully controlling sonos via an android phone connected to an wifi access point which is in turn connected to my router through a couple of PA411s. In the past I am fairly sure that I have connected my android phone connect through a WPA4220. But none of this has involved a speaker in wi-fi mode. The recent Tp-link products have some QoS option not sure if this would have any impact on the problem.

@Ralpfocus 

I have done some preliminary tests, but want to repeat them, since as I mentioned the results can appear to be inconsistent and I want to be sure of any conclusions.

Also, I could remove the PA281, but I am a bit reluctant to do so since this has proved to be the most problematic of my wifi extenders and once the signal drops it can take several days or more for it to decide to work again.  I know it is quite old, but it looks to all intents and purposes exactly the same as the PA4220 and, on the plus side, I know that in this situation I am definitely only connecting the iOS controllers via the PA4220.

For what it’s worth, I suspect that an Android controller, assuming it still connects direct to the SonosNet SSID as I think it used to, would work with the Move/Roam, for the same reason that my CR200’s work perfectly, regardless of either their location or that of the Move.  I am becoming increasingly convinced that my problem is an inability of an iOS controller to connect to the Move, unless both devices share the exact same network.  Using the PA4220, there seems to be a distinction between its “local” wifi network and that of the router, even though the network details have been cloned and they definitely share the same SSID.  I just wish I had an Android device to hand so could check it out.  That said, maybe I can access one to find out.

Will report back asap hopefully some time over the weekend.

@Ralpfocus 

Having reflected on the issue overnight, I suspect my comment about Move/Roam and Android controllers is way too optimistic. Just not sure how you’d get the powerline to transmit the SonosNet signal for the Android phone to pick it up in your shed, especially given that Sonos seems to go out of its way to discourage any use of powerlines with their kit nowadays.  I will still try to get access to an Android phone to see if it works in my situation, which I think it could given that I have other Sonos players in range working on SonosNet, but guess that won’t help in your case.  Sorry if I got your hopes up.

These connectivity problems are not with powerline connections per se, but (I suspect) with those specific adapters. 

Powerline connections do often present reliability and latency issues, which is why Sonos deprecates them for actual audio streaming, but for control purposes they should work. 

By the way, Android devices can no longer connect directly to SonosNet. This has been the case for some while. 

@ratty Thanks for the  clarification. It’s been a while since I had an Android phone and wondered if that might be the case. Under the circumstances, I will forget about trying an Android device, which could be a bit more difficult to arrange in lockdown, than might normally be the case.