Sonos, Unifi, VLANs, and RSTP clarification

  • 10 November 2020
  • 17 replies
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After having read this RSTP Post from a year ago, I need a clarification.

My Sonos (9 spkrs) system is working fairly well and reliably in a VLAN (IoT) and can be controlled from the main LAN via Android, IoS, and Windows.  After quite a bit of work setting up my EdgeRouter-4 with firewall groups and rules, IGMP, mDNS, multi-cast (not blocked), and now RSTP/STP, I have a question from the post above

First my setup:  Off of my EdgeRouter-4 is a 24-port Unifi Switch. Off of that switch are three other Unifi US-8 switches. On one port of the 24port Switch is a Sonos Boost and on one of the US-8 switches is a PlayBase wired connection. It won't connect wirelessly anymore. Wifi adapter went bad I guess. All other Sonos speakers are wireless. Before today I had all switches set to STP, but as many have noted this slows down all other non-Sonos DHCP requests to 45-55 seconds. Who knows what other network problems this causes. I saw your article about setting each of the switches to RSTP and in your point #3, you say to turn Off STP for (in my case) the two Sonos devices wired to switches. It seems backwards. I thought you were going to say set each switch Globally to RSTP (which you did) and TURN ON STP for the two outlying ports with Sonos devices wired to switches. I also thought setting each of the switches globally to RSTP instead of STP would turn off ALL the individual port profile overrides for STP and I'd just have to go in and turn one port's STP back on. Can you help me understand? FYI, I DID follow your instructions as written and it DOES seem to still work, but as you must have experienced too, networks often need some settling in time, and that’s what I’m afraid of. DHCP requests are reasonable now too, which was the whole point in messing with this today. 


17 replies

Userlevel 5
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Hi @jeffpdavis1, welcome to the Sonos community, and thank you for providing us with a detailed concern. Let’s wait for @BatraD to answer your questions and inquiries about the RSTP Post. We can wait for suggestions and feedback from our Sonos community members, they might provide their own opinion about this. You may also check out these articles from our website Sonos system requirements and Sonos STP Switch Settings for your reference. If you need help with any other information, feel free to reach out.

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this is the correct config that I’m using as well as recommend by a Unifi tech (i have no relation to Unifi or Sonos except being an end customer)

 

When you turn on RSTP on the switch, you want the ports that the Sonos equipment is connected on not be part of the cost calculations or group by turning off STP on the ports. Hence you are effectively disabling them from participating and everything works.

 

My only request would be if Sonos would offer RTSP logic in their firmware to keep up with the times..

 

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Since my post above, I contacted Sonos about my Playbase’s dead wireless adapter. They surprisingly replaced the whole 3 year old Playbase with a new one.  Good for them and me.  I installed it in my system so that every other Sonos device (9 in all) was wireless, except the Boost, hoping that I could turn RSTP on and leave the STP out of the picture.  And it worked!!  It also doesn’t seem to matter whether I turn off STP in the profile override section of the Unifi switch’s port into which the Boost is connected.  On or Off, everything still works.  BatraD, does that make sense to you?

The Boost is centrally located, all the boxes in the Network Matrix are green, except for the left column.  Three of those (the ones making up the surround Play Ones and the Sub) are green (OFDM ANI=0) and all the rest are RED (OFDM ANI=9). I can believe that the house is pretty noisy. I’ve read many many posts about this interference, have kept the 2.4 Ghz wifi transmitting at low power, all four Unifi APs assigned the same channel, and different from the Sonosnet channel. I’ve steered clients to 5Ghz and most are. Whether bluetooth is on/off on all computers, devices and cars doesn’t seem to make any difference.  Another question though is why are the three home theatre speakers Green in the left column while the Playbase (from which they’re virtually grouped) is Red, along with all the other speakers?  That seems like a pretty wide spread (0 to 9).  Maybe I shouldn’t be so obsessed with it since I CAN control everything across subnets without dropouts. That is the point, I guess.

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@jeffpdavis1 i’m glad everything worked out. Sonos support is great.. I had two older Play:1s where the casing had cracked.. they replaced them both last year. 

My house is noisy as well, mostly from my neighbor's wifi signals (can pick over 15 SSID in 2.4 Ghz).

As long as the devices are able to play music without interruption, you should be good. If you ever need to increase the Sonos mesh, you could add another speaker or a boost to amplify the SONOSNet 

Good Luck

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Hi folks, I`m replacing my unmanaged TP-Link switch this week by a new Unifi Lite 16 managed one. So I`m a bit worried about my Sonos Ecosystem that is partially wired. Now, reading this and the embedded posts, this raises some questions:

  • The new Unifi switch will default RSTP. Can I just leave it that way and simply disable STP on the ports that point to a wired Sonos ? So assuming there is no weird sequence of system actions to be taken (?)
  • One of  my Sonos is wired through another Switch (TP-Link) layer which is currently unmanaged and need to be replaced in the future but not immediately. Will/could that cause additional issues for the other devices wired to that switch if I disable STP ?
  • On wiki I read that RSTP was designed to be backwards-compatible with standard STP. Why is this then still causing issues with Sonos ?

@Eddie the Eagle, Sonos STP Switch Settings for managed switches.

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Thanks Smilja, the article is well known. It is only that this post including the embedded posts point into a different direction for Ubiquiti switches that would make me (not only me) much happier.

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Update: I just installed the Unifi Switch and did a Plug and Pray of all my cables including the wired Sonos. I changed nothing in the default settings of the switch and expected my Sonos not to start up to be honest, reading all the messages on STP.

It`s running for an hour now without any issue.

I have networks unifi.
2 network:

master and iot.

my system sonos on iot but from iPhone on master network don’t connect with sonos. 
can you help me?

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Well, for what it’s worth, I’d be very very happy with my 18 zones across 2 homes if Sonos would implement RSTP so I didn’t have to reset STP weights every so often. I know Sonos meat is amazing. But resetting these switch settings every so often feels distinctly Stone Age sysadmin. 

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I think you are in line with the SMB folks, waiting for a switch to a modern Linux kernel.

Hopefully we’ll see all kinds of good stuff fall out of that upgrade, whenever it happens.

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Is that a known forthcoming change to a modern linux kernel?  Or is that speculation among the community?  Not asking about timing - I know Sonos plays cards close to the vest, and support that choice - just whether there has been an acknowledgment that that would be a good thing and if it’s being worked on. 
 

thanks

Speculation by the community. Sonos doesn’t tell us, with very few exceptions, what they have planned in the roadmap, and when. 

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Speculation by the community. Sonos doesn’t tell us, with very few exceptions, what they have planned in the roadmap, and when. 

Thanks. I know this probably isn’t the right place, and that this is not totally idle speculation, but do we know what kernel it is running on, and whether S2 hardware would theoretically / practically support a more modern kernel?  I’m not equating more modern necessarily with more resource intensive, there are plenty of modern minimalist distros, but I’m guessing it’s running on a pretty bespoke and minimal setup currently, and it’d be a big project without a lot of upsides (besides this one), no?  Are there other known dependencies?

 

</useless speculation>

Userlevel 7
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You can look at the Sonos Open Source stuff to see what they are using.

It isn’t a matter of bloated or minimalist distribution (as you’d see on a server or desktop) but the true size of the Linux kernel and necessary modules Sonos needs to support essential functions.

Brain is far too fuzzy to recall when and what versions but if you look at the Linux docs you could see the minimum size changes over time with a couple big bumps.

Same thing for the Samba module, it grew a lot and has too many dependencies on the newer kernel to backport to the old one with a reasonable level of effort, ignoring of course that once ported it wouldn’t fit in the old Sonos gear.

 

While I know nothing I have a hard time imagining Sonos doing the S1 / S2 split and not looking at a new kernel with the huge improvements it offers for S2.

I wanted to chime in as much to remember what I did as to hopefully either add or validate your suggestions that I’ve seen all over the forums. I have a Netgate SG-3100 running pfSense running into a UniFi Gen2 24 POE managed switch (USW-24-PoE). From there I’m out to several UniFi Flex Mini switches (USW-Flex-Mini) and two UniFi nanoHD APs (UAP-nanoHD).

I personally have given up on putting my Sonos gear in a separate IoT network. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze. It’s on a VLAN that connects most family devices.

I assumed that wiring in as many of my Sonos products would make things faster and easier. Clearly, I was wrong. @BatraD finally helped me make some forward progress with this post: Sonos and Unifi gear / VLANs - RSTP update. I turned the radio transmit power on both APs to low for the 2.4GHz networks and set the channel to 11 (my Sonos channel is 1). Then @jeffpdavis1 mentioned a network matrix, which I knew nothing about. I found out about that here. When I did what @BatraD recommended, everything started working great. I checked my network matrix and things were OK.

I hooked up everything back to what I needed for other devices, which meant plugging the Sonos units into the Flex Mini switches. However, I was not able to turn off STP per port on those Flex Mini switches. Where I needed those smaller switches, I ended up unplugging my Sonos units from the wired network, plugged in an unused Boost, and now things are working. Besides the leftmost column, everything is green in the network matrix. The iOS app seems much more responsive. Even with nothing streaming, the VLAN with Sonos runs a little slower than my other VLANs.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone have any idea what would happen if I turn off STP to the USW-24-PoE ports connected to the FlexMini switches? Are there any other work arounds? Not surprisingly, a couple of those newly unconnected Connects are now running wirelessly next to an amplifier and in a cabinet, which seems to be noisy.

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FWIW, I have a small Unifi network with 5 Sonos units (see diagram).  The Amp and one One are wired via ethernet, the other three Ones are connected via SonosNet wireless.  I have the Switch Lite set to STP and everything works great.  On a whim I tried to follow BatraD’s instructions (set to RSTP and disable on STP on the Switch Lite port that feeds the One wired to the Switch Flex Mini) and it brought my network down.  Maybe it would have worked if I had the Amp on a switch port that I could change STP on as well, but the UDM-pro doesn’t let you manage the internal switch at all.

 

 

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