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Network Matrix confusion and STP

  • 21 November 2019
  • 8 replies
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Attached is a picture of my network matrix. Every item is hardwired to network  with wireless disabled, except the playbar in bonus room has wireless enabled to talk to subwoofer. The playbar is also wired to network, since the subwoofer is wireless I enabled wireless on playbar. My thought was that the playbar would turn on sonosnet for just the subwoofer. The Matrix shows a lot of undefined items, I can’t seem to find what MAC addresses those belong to. I have submitted a diagnostics report if that helps, 764802476. I have ubiquiti unifi switches with STP enabled correctly, however this delays the time for getting IP addresses so i would like to turn that off if possible. With my current setup, I believe there will be no loops and therefore do not need STP correct? In summary, what’s undefined stuff and can I disable STP.

 

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Best answer by ratty 21 November 2019, 16:08

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Userlevel 7

Hi perrydavid1985

Once a speaker (or Boost) is wired the SonosNet is commonly used for all Sonos automictically. Unless every Sonos product is wired I suggest you re-enable wireless. 

However, I believe there may be some prep work before you re-enable wireless so I suggest you call Sonos Tech support before doing anything. You can also contact them via Twitter or Facebook which are 24/7.

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Every Sonos product is wired except for subwoofer, however to connect it I had to enable wireless on playbar. 

The matrix is perfectly normal, or at least it’s as expected. 

The leftmost grey ‘undefined’ cell is due to the Sub having been shunted from the Playbar’s 2.4GHz radio (MAC ending 71:15:50) to its 5GHz radio (ending 71:15:51).

The other grey ‘undefined’ cells are from the Playbar to all the nodes that have had their radios disabled. The matrix leaves strange ghost entries under such circumstances: the ‘undefined’ columns are the actual disabled radios and the named (empty) columns are the same device but with the internal MAC substituted for the wireless MAC. Likewise the internal MAC appears in the left column for radio-disabled nodes, instead of the wireless MAC.

You can turn off STP in the switches.

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Thanks guys!

Is there a way to see all the interfaces for each sonos item? When I look at the items on the support page I couldn’t seem to find those mac addresses.

Is there a way to see all the interfaces for each sonos item? When I look at the items on the support page I couldn’t seem to find those mac addresses.

Look in the /sbin/ifconfig section for each node in /support/review:

  • br0 (or eth0) is the internal MAC.
  • ath0 is the 2.4GHz radio (missing if that interface is disabled)
  • ath1 is the 5GHz radio

(BTW I edited my earlier post a little to expand on the matrix contents.)

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Awesome, that makes sense. I was concerned the unidentified items would connect somehow and create a loop which breaks everything. Thanks for the prompt responses!

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Hi perrydavid1985

Once a speaker (or Boost) is wired the SonosNet is commonly used for all Sonos automictically. Unless every Sonos product is wired I suggest you re-enable wireless. 

 

AjTrek1:   Hope you don’t mind a question on this thread.  I recently had a bunch of problems and I wired as much as I could out of my system but not everything.  I traded messages with Sonos because I was having issues and they told me if I wired even one device by ethernet I should remove my wireless network address because that was likely causing a conflict that kept causing drop-outs.  Since doing that step, I think I’ve resolved it.

 

I noted your comment that wireless should be on unless every sonos product is wired.

 

Is enabling wireless different than keeping a password stored for my local wifi network?  I’m thinking so but wanted to double-check.

 

Thank you!

Yes, it’s different. If you’ve got one or more devices directly wired, you should remove the SSID information from your system, so there is no potential of “flapping” between the two connections.

Leaving wireless on just means that the speaker’s Wi-Fi and SonosNet system/card/antenna is on, so the speakers can talk to each other as necessary. Especially important in home theater rooms, since the sound bar connects to the surround speakers and the SUB using a network that you can’t see. If you turn off the “Wi-Fi” on the sound bar, your surrounds won’t work at all, unless you’ve also wired them with an Ethernet cable, something not very common at all.

Generally speaking, you should never turn off the Wi-Fi/radio/whatever poorly chosen name Sonos calls it unless specifically instructed to. It can be occasionally useful to installers, but rarely useful for the great majority of home users.