SonosNet is a Mystery

Apart from situations where a loop would otherwise occur, or a high bandwidth link would be bypassed by SonosNet, about the only other reason to disable the radio would surely be where interference is a factor. The pile of units in a rack could fall under that heading (plus disabling radios also helps reduce heat dissipation). 

For years I’ve disabled the radio on one of a pair, wired to the other -- otherwise wireless -- unit, due to the former’s proximity to a microwave oven. A wired speaker right next to a Zigbee hub also has its radio turned off.

Okay all helpful.

1. I do have DHCP reservations for every single SONOS device in my Synology router.
2. I just plugged my Sonos BOOST back in and lone-behold my surround/subwoofer stopped working.  Tech support told me earlier: oh you gotta have WiFi on with every device.  Right now I DO!!  Something is really weird with the logic.  I have found that previously when wifi was off on my Amp, and hopping over to surrounds/sub via the BOOST it failed and no audio came out.  When I reset my whole system and the BEAM was the host device surrounds/sub worked great!  But at the moment I have done what everyone keeps saying: one device hardwired and the rest wireless, I even unplugged the stereo pairs.  Every single unit is not plugged into Ethernet except my Beam and then when I plug Boost in, just that.
3. I’ve tried so many combinations of things that it gets confusing.  But still when I have everything working and I remove my home wifi network from networks, half my devices vanish forever, until I plug one of the wireless devices into my Ethernet, and then they all come back.  So something is like making a separate network or something.  It seems like SonosNet just gets forgotten.  What I don’t understand is how SonosNet isn’t just like a hidden SSID that every speaker knows, and if home wifi isn’t found, why doesn’t it scan for that SSID?  And why some devices somehow get the lost devices to come back online but others can’t.  There is some magic happening somewhere.

This is why I say SONOS BOOST is a paper weight piece of trash:  Per #2 above.  When I had Amp plugged into an Orbi satellite with wifi turned off, if the hop device to my surrounds is BOOST, silence emits from surrounds and sub.  When the hop device is BEAM, they play fantastically!  I hear audio from all 3!  So BOOST is a paper weight piece of trash.  Both Boost and Beam are plugged into the same network switch and Boost is actually a couple of feet closer to the surrounds/sub.

The Boost shouldn’t talk to the surrounds/Sub. They’d connect to the HT master device, which ought to be the Amp if they’re bonded to it. Stop disabling the radio (“WiFi”) on any HT master; it kills the 5GHz radio that the surrounds/Sub depend upon. 

1. Enable the radios (“WiFi”) on all your devices.
2. Wire to the Synology router or the Orbi primary node. Do not wire to any Orbi satellite. 

Wireless Surrounds and Sub (whilst playing) each communicate ‘direct’ with their Sonos master HT device over an ad-hoc 5Ghz connection… they do not generally use the Boost, or your WiFi signal, when playing, they’ll only possibly do that when in standby.

Maybe the master HT (5Ghz) wireless adapter is still disabled, or perhaps not working as it should be, or something is interfering with the ad-hoc communication. Are all the HT devices in the same room without anything obvious likely to cause such a wireless communication issue?

(edit: @ratty beat me to it, so sorry for the repetitive post here).

Wireless satellites should always connect to the HT master. 5GHz when playing; 2.4GHz when idle.

Only if the radios have been turned off on the HT master will the satellites connect to somewhere else, such as a Boost. This is an incorrect configuration, and the audio in the satellites is likely to fail.

I was wondering if the Amp is perhaps not located in the same physical room as its Surrounds and Sub and perhaps having trouble communicating with them .. that’s assuming their WiFi adapters are not disabled?

The BOOST must not have a 5GHz radio then but the BEAM does, and the BEAM happily sends realtime surround/sub data even though it’s not the master.  I had the Amp wifi turned off (which is paired to surrounds/sub) and it was happily sending data up Orbi’s backhaul to the root switch, then jumping off the BEAM to get to 1 surround, which was sharing data with the other and sub over a 5-port headless switch.

ALL this said, I have everything EXACTLY as you’re telling me now just to see if it actually works.  Every device has wifi on, every device Ethernet unplugged, except one.  I’m seeing some good and some bad results.  I’ll keep messing with it.  If the band is why surrounds/sub connect but don’t play any audio, that answers one question.  Some sonos devices don’t have a 5 GHz radio in them.  Really odd that Sonos doesn’t build any error messages in, stuff just doesn’t work, but I guess from a product standpoint that’s friendlier.

I have a few nodes that are just stuck to my home wifi.  Right now, half my speakers are connecting to the BEAM.  The other half are connecting to home home wifi.  These other half will only connect to BOOST or my home wifi.  I can’t get them to go through BEAM anymore.  These also happen to be the ones that have NEVER been plugged into Ethernet, they are 100% always wireless nodes.  So there is some weird state that they get in where they have some priority to use home wifi / boost OR the main Ethernet device (BEAM).  If I then remove my wifi from my system, those home wifi / boost nodes vanish forever and never come back until I plug boost back in.  Most of what is talked about here makes sense, but some nodes get into a weird state where they prioritize home wifi/boost and they just refuse to connect to SonosNet unless it’s from a boost.

What I wanted was my BEAM to be the central SonosNet node, connect directly to every wireless speaker (it’s very much central, gets a great connection with every wireless node) and then every speaker near Orbi would be plugged in via Ethernet with WiFi disabled so there is no chance of it forming the hop back to the router.  Then about half the traffic would go over Orbi’s 5GHz backhaul and the other half over SonosNet 2.4GHz to totally wireless nodes, therefore splitting the load between both.  This worked great for a while until it quit and now a few speakers are stuck in WM: 1 mode and they latch onto BOOST when plugged in, even when it gives a yellow connection in the status panel but to beam gave a green latency.  So it makes zero sense that it’s choosing the worse connection.  Beam is conveniently the strongest wireless antenna and also automatically in the best location to be great for every node.

I had this for a few days after my full system reset and it all worked great!  Then I honestly don’t know what broke it.  I was maybe messing with something or restarted some devices and then it all messed up.  Maybe I need to reset everything again, it worked great after that.

In the Status Network Matrix, the WM: 1 speakers have an empty box between them and the Beam.  Why is this empty?  It totally shouldn’t be, it’s a very strong connection.  How can I tell a speaker to connect to Beam’s SonosNet?  Just go back to how it was before, it was working great.