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Hi all, 

currently at our football club we have 7 Sonos speakers. 
we have been using them on wifi and group them together to play music or play sound from the TV 

but we found that the speakers drop in and out or when using the TV the sounds lags out or goes off and on.

the wifi signal is great all around the club house (it’s not that big) and I have done speed tests near the speakers we are getting 150 download at the hub and around 100 near all the speakers. 

we thought if we hard wired all the speakers this would solve the issue, So 2 of us today have spent the day and ran ethernet cable to each speaker and bought and network switch. 
as soon as you plug the speakers into the switch it kills the internet, everything stops working, as soon as you unplug the switch the wifi kicks in and the internet works again. 
 

we have tried plugging one speaker into the BT hub and this works once we try and plug 2/3 it then kills the internet, we have tried other devices by Ethernet and it’s fine so we think it’s something the do with the Sonos set up.

we know once you plug the speakers in by Ethernet it creates a Sonos mesh is this what is messing up the internet ? 
 

if we only plug the 1 or 2 in we still get the issue of the other speaker on wifi that have drop outs etc. 

 

any help and advice I would appreciate it as we have spent a good 8 hours on it. 

As a guess , you have a managed switch, not an unmanaged switch.  By plugging multiple Sonos devices in, you’re creating a ‘network storm’, which is killing everything. 

Plug only one Sonos into the British Telecom device. Read through the wifi interference FAQ for any potential fixes. If you’re still having issues, I would recommend that you submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of experiencing this problem, and call Sonos Support to discuss it.

There may be information included in the diagnostic that will help Sonos pinpoint the issue and help you find a solution.

When you speak directly to the Support staff, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your network and Sonos system.

Thanks for your reply. 
 

no it’s a unmanaged switch. 
 

doing some research it could be this. 

Are all of the SONOS units wired to the switch, none to the BT?

No 

all wired to the switch. 
 

but to try to eliminate things we tried 

• all plugged into the switch (issues)

• only plugging 3 into the switch and the rest of wifi (issues)

•unplugging the switch and plugging straight into the BT hub (issues) max 4

•only plugging one into the switch or directly into the hub and the rest in wifi, it’s all works but drop outs 

 

Are any network components on this list?

We have been recommend to buy a manger switch and this should help. Once installed I will let you know 

We have bought a managed switched. And that seems of fixed the issue, looks like it was creating a network storm 

The other way to have fixed this (cheaper) would be to add one speaker at a time on ethernet, then in the app turn off the WiFi, reboot it and then move to the next one. 

The problem you had was by default, the speakers assume that plugging them in means you want Sonosnet, and it was that that caused the network storms as the Sonos speakers take control of the network but don’t play well with some devices causing them to route internet etc over the internal Sonos network or cause broadcast storms. 

Yes a managed switch can handle the storms better but it doesn’t really address the root issue which is Sonosnet. Hard-wiring works best without Sonosnet. Then any speakers you can’t hard wire will just use the normal WiFi. 

If you have WiFi interference, adding another WiFi network (by accident) won’t help that issue. 

Sonos devices also don’t like being near other WiFi devices when on WiFi… of course carefully hard wiring (turning off WiFi) will help there. 

You should still be able to go round each speaker and turn the WiFi off in the Sonos app. 

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