Sonos Network New Install

Welcome to the forums.

Wired is always best if it's possible. Note that where multiple Sonos units are wired the switches/router on the wired path between them mustn't interfere with STP (Spanning Tree Protocol) traffic. Sonos uses STP to avoid loops. This post has the detail.

With all the WiFi points one key consideration is that channels should be arranged to avoid interfering with Sonos. Choose only 1, 6 or 11 for WiFi -- ideally one not shared with Sonos -- and don't use 40MHz/wide channels at 2.4GHz.

nialler,

First post! Welcome to the forums.

Note that SONOS does not use WiFi. If you needed nine UBIQUITY access points to cover the area, you must very carefully lay out the SONOS system if you are using wireless. Avoid using the same RF channel for SONOS and your WiFi, use only channels 1, 6, or 11 for WiFi, and avoid using "Wide" or "40MHz" channels on WiFi.

Yes, wire as many SONOS units as possible. If you need to fill-in a "dark" area, you can use a SONOS BRIDGE (wired or wireless).

Hi Ratty thanks for the prompt reply. Even though the SONOS is getting IP addresses from my server (I've now added reservations) am I presuming correctly that the SONOS is using a proprietary wireless network and not piggybacking the UniFi (which are in fact all running on 1, 6 or 11), I did set the APs to run a 40mhz but I've reverted on that today as wireless slowed a fair amount. I'll wire as may speakers as is practicable.

I'll be changing the subnet in the coming weeks to sort our our limited free addresses but I'll read through that post and see how it goes.

Niall

Sonos builds its own proprietary mesh network between units. The physical layer is the same as WiFi but the protocols are different. SonosNet and WiFi don't interoperate.

IMO using a WiFi channel width of 40MHz at 2.4GHz is an idea which should have been strangled at birth. It can occupy up to 82% of the entire band.

Hi guys

Little update, after doing some of your suggestions, powering down all SONOS devices, I moved the Bridge to a more central location in the building, powered up the bridge and all the speakers and it brought my network to a standstill, extremely laggy controller app on the mac with groupings dropping out again. I have since powered down all the speakers and bridge, rebooted my firewall and DHCP server (win2008), removed all reservations for the SONOS devices. I'm at a bit of a loss now at this stage and fear powering them back up as with 70+ users on the network there could be consequences and loss of productivity.

Any advice would be welcome.

Niall

If the network ground to a halt and you have more than one Sonos unit wired then it's an STP problem. Managed switches which support STP could well need to have it explicitly enabled.

nialler,

Your first stop should be the Hall of Shame. If any of your hardware is listed here, you'll need to deal with it.

PING something, SONOS units will respond to a PING. I think that you will find very slow PING's and dropped packets.

If you can arrange that only one SONOS unit is wired to the network, SONOS will take care of its own STP issues. You can daisy chain SONOS units in order to avoid wiring more than one to your switches. Take care to limit your chain length to seven or less (including switches ahead of SONOS).

Buzz when you say daisy chain limit of seven, I've 15 speakers plus Bridge we're trying to have an agency jukebox with a shared spotify playlist that any staff can add to.

Are my expectations a little high? I've got 7 Cisco SG200-26 switches (not on the HoS list and an updated .ac Airport Extreme), I had only the bridge at the time wired to the network.

Both buildings are old edwardian style, so really well constructed (no stud partitions), solid walls, 3 floors, wooden joists so and no underfloor heating to block signals. I'll run through the cisco logs and see what the switches are saying.

STP is enabled, Rapid STP as opposed to classic, BPDU set to flooding as opposed to filtering and Path cost set to Long.

This is all heaped on top of me figuring out a way to create VLANs without layer3 switches.

The joys of being a part time IT manager.


Edit: I've 2 active speakers on the network, both visible in the SONOS App on PC server, have one streaming a local radio station, no impact whatsoever on network 98mb DL 97mb UL, when I had them all on it was down to 23mb/4mb. Fibre line generally with a 2ms ping.

nialler,

Most of the SONOS units offer a built-in Ethernet switch. The overall concept is that this switch can be used to replace a network port used by the SONOS unit. Of course, these switches support STP. This is why having only one SONOS component directly wired to your Ethernet will not create STP drama -- even if some of the SONOS units are wired to each other and STP on the wired network is a mess. Drama starts with the second wired SONOS unit if there is an underlying STP issue with your network.

Each time traffic passes through a switch, you have picked up a link in the chain. (You might also find this referred to as "radius") Don't forget to count the switch built into a router as a link too. If you have a 24-port switch connected to the router, all of the units directly wired to that switch are at the same level. If you have an additional switch following that first switch, perhaps a 48-port switch, then all units connected to the 48-port switch are an additional level down.

nialler,

Keep in mind that the SONOS applications are just controllers, they don't play anything. Each player is an independent agent that fetches its own music. The controller, along with the whole server (unless music files are being fetched from the server), can be shut down after the players are given a list of things to do.