Contributor I

Sonos, Unifi, VLANs, and RSTP clarification

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.

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Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

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.

johnnymumu

Trending Lyricist I

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

—Playing all day, every day—

Airgetlam

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

Bruce

johnnymumu

Trending Lyricist I

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>

—Playing all day, every day—

Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

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.

G

Gralumpagus

Lyricist I

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.

T

tg1

Enthusiast II

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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