Okay how about this one: I turn my Roams/Moves off. I remove my home wifi from Networks. And 5 minutes later they’re back on, connected to my home wifi, and in WM: 1. How does this make sense? I’ve done this 5 times now.
It’s because their network settings are not stored in the Sonos App, they are actually stored on the speakers/hardware - switching the Move/Roam off before removing the wireless credentials was your mistake here - the Sonos App is a ‘remote’ and the settings you see are actually on each of your speakers/devices.
Okay how about this one: I turn my Roams/Moves off. I remove my home wifi from Networks. And 5 minutes later they’re back on, connected to my home wifi, and in WM: 1. How does this make sense? I’ve done this 5 times now.
If they were off when you removed the WiFi of course the Roams/Moves were unaware of the removal.
@benn600,
As mentioned in my earlier post, wire the Boost direct to your router - ensure the WiFi is enabled on all your Sonos devices, uncable all ‘other’ Sonos devices (Beam etc.) and restart anything that does not switchover to SonosNet, except for your portable devices (Roam/Move) as those devices do not (ever) use SonosNet. So all should show WM:0 in the ‘about box’. The Roam and Move will show as WM:1 and will simply continue to use your Orbi WiFi (The Orbi credentials will be viewable in the Sonos App network settings - do not remove them, there’s no need).
Okay, no I’m talking about the latency box (middle) not the headers. I don’t even look at the noise values because they’re useless and not shown on new devices. The latency from Beam to every speaker was green, until Boost took over and now some are yellow. I’m messing with some things and while the totally as expected configuration doesn’t work very well either, I’m going to test out switching to my amp being the primary node because that’s the only device that has wireless speakers. But yes having separate 2.4 Ghz and 5 ghz networks would be helpful. Or I can use my Synology router wifi just temporarily and then turn it off. All of these discussions are helping and I think pushing me in a direction of understanding the limitations and working within the capabilities of Sonos.
“There’s no need” -- well better put, Sonos doesn’t reveal anything regarding specific speakers so you cannot remove them. Unless Move/Roams are turned off. Just really “user friendly first” I guess to conceal anything technical. My individual speakers shouldn’t connect to my wifi. Yes it would be nice if they had the option in case they lost sonosnet briefly but still I like to be more intentional and specific with configurations (if that isn’t evident). I’m learning more about what is supported and not.
What is also helpful here, is to set your SonosNet channel in the Sonos App network settings to one that is not being used by your Orbi WiFi Hubs.
Haha SonosNet changed that channel every time I open the page. It’s a fallacy that you have any control over it. Right? It should automatically pick. I have Orbi set to auto, as should Sonos be, because if 3 neighbors use each channel it should switch to the least used channel at the moment.
Okay, no I’m talking about the latency box (middle) not the headers. I don’t even look at the noise values because they’re useless and not shown on new devices. The latency from Beam to every speaker was green, until Boost took over and now some are yellow.
It’s not latency in the main matrix cells; it’s signal strength.
As for why a wireless node would choose to connect to the Boost rather than the Beam, it’s because that path offers the lower root path cost. The Beam’s own root path cost could be being increased by non-Sonos kit in the core of the network.
That just seems a bit nuts. It’s making a bad root path cost conclusion because both Beam and Boost are plugged into the same 8-port unmanaged switch. So bad job algorithm. BEAM gets yellow or green signal noise on every speaker and green latency on every speaker. Boost flips half yellow. So again, terrible job algorithm. Really bad job.
Right after I reset every speaker, it was working flawlessly. So I might just have to reset everything again and try to retrace my steps to see where everything went horribly wrong and everything got into a bad state.
What makes it difficult is that everything can be running smoothly, all connected to Boost, etc. and then I unplug Boost and half the speaker vanish. Never to return. This is the main question that I think needs to be answered. It’s like it has the hidden SSID and no other speakers do.
Do you actually know what ‘root path cost’ means?
Is signal strength not factored in to `root path cost`? When beam gets a 50-60+ inbound and outbound and Boost drops that to 30-40 that seems like quite a bit higher cost.
Haha SonosNet changed that channel every time I open the page. It’s a fallacy that you have any control over it. Right? It should automatically pick. I have Orbi set to auto, as should Sonos be, because if 3 neighbors use each channel it should switch to the least used channel at the moment.
It does set a channel automatically the first time it is enabled, but you ideally need to have all your devices showing in the Sonos App when changing the SonosNet channel manually.
As mentioned earlier, think of the App as a ‘viewer/remote’ and the settings stored on each of your speakers/products. So if a speaker is offline it will not get the setting changes until you perhaps reboot it and get it back into the system and able to see it in the App.
Anyhow if you can at some point going forward, select to put your Sonos devices on a channel not in use by your Orbi Hubs as that will help reduce the potential for interference.
If you’re going to try and second-guess SonosNet’s topology computations it helps to have at least a basic understanding of STP.
Okay I set Orbi to channel 11 and SonosNet to channel 6. No more automatic. Will test this out and keep messing with everything. I don’t like having extra hardware if it’s not necessary and my setup, to the documentation by Sonos, says I don’t need a BOOST. But removing it has proven impossible because half my system vanishes when I do. So it’s not as simple as the tutorials say: just remove it! That’s a great big laugh.
OMG after changing both channels all of my devices switched over to the SonosNet device I wanted and not the crappy boost. You, sir, and the 10 other people who told me to do so, deserve a fast clap. I will keep messing with it.
It’s still going strong a few hours later. I guess it was the channels interfering? That seems wild that so little could impact so much. I’ll describe my whole setup later, it’s working exactly as I wanted, just with a slight adjustment.
For half a day now it has been working exactly as I wanted. It seems like changing the channels of my Orbi and Sonos just made it instantly work. Which is shocking. But very awesome, and would explain why sometimes it worked better than others because Orbi was set to automatic. Although prior to my full reset I did have Orbi pegged to a channel. So not totally sure about what was breaking that earlier setup.
My high level setup is as follows:
Orbi AC3000 Base with 3 Orbi Satellites (I was an early adopter right when they got introduced, still awesome devices)
All router/DHCP is handled by an awesome Synology router. All Sonos nodes (and just about everything else) has a reserved IP address in organized blocks.
Amp is plugged into an Orbi satellite and has wifi turned on, to broadcast the precious 5GHz signal to surrounds/sub and the 2.4GHz signal to everything else. Rear Right has wifi turned on, Right Left/Sub have wifi turned off. All 3 are plugged into a 5-port unmanaged switch. Right Rear handles all the wireless traffic for all 3. I also have a wired sub plugged into the amp. Wired (coaxial) sub is in the front of the room and the wireless sub is in the rear of the room with the surrounds.
The other two Orbi Satellites each have a stereo pair connected directly with WiFi turned off. Yes, the loop back issue is a huge issue if wifi isn’t disabled. Orbi starts thinking it can use the Sonos as backhaul and some of that traffic gets blocked so random devices/requests fail. Super intermittently bad. Really would be cool if there was a way to prevent this issue, like making Sonos only support Sonos traffic. But I’m still all good regardless.
My Orbi Router has a Beam and Sub plugged in (again wifi disabled). This was previously my main Sonos, but I had to switch to amp because I do rely on wireless surrounds/sub there.
I also have a stereo pair not plugged into any switches, just connected together, with the physically closest speaker having wifi on and the other off. In addition to 3 single One’s scattered around, of course on SonosNet with no Ethernet cable. And 1 Move & 2 Roams.
I just prefer hardwired so much that whenever possible I want that handled by the 1.8Gbps Orbi backhaul and not the slower Orbi or Sonos wireless networks. I thought one speaker would be too far to reach Amp but it’s even showing as green in the status table right now.
My test (since Sonos doesn’t do a single thing to inform users when there is drop out—they should log: 100ms audio dropped on Zone 
is to play an HDMI source everywhere, mute everything, then turn zones up to hear them in the distance and listen for any variation or drop outs. I run this test frequently when I have everything setup to see if it’s stable and able to handle the challenging task of pushing realtime audios streams everywhere with approaching no drop outs. Naturally the devices plugged into the Orbi backhaul are rock solid.
So in my huge status table I only have 7 colored boxes, and all are speakers connecting to Amp, all are green except the furthest speaker away which is 50/50 green/yellow. I have 20 Sonos nodes (3 use home wifi).
Okay I set Orbi to channel 11 and SonosNet to channel 6. No more automatic.
Make sure the Orbi is using a 20MHz width channel otherwise it could hit SonosNet. Netgear tends to default to 40MHz.
For half a day now it has been working exactly as I wanted. It seems like changing the channels of my Orbi and Sonos just made it instantly work. Which is shocking.
Not really. Partial overlaps between channels are particularly damaging. And close proximity between an Orbi node and a Sonos component would obviously amplify such effects.
Amp is plugged into an Orbi satellite and has wifi turned on, to broadcast the precious 5GHz signal to surrounds/sub and the 2.4GHz signal to everything else. Rear Right has wifi turned on, Right Left/Sub have wifi turned off. All 3 are plugged into a 5-port unmanaged switch. Right Rear handles all the wireless traffic for all 3.
I really don’t see why you insist on this arrangement since you “don’t like having extra hardware if it’s not necessary”. The bandwidth of the 5GHz channel the Amp autoselects for its satellites is more than sufficient to service them all wirelessly.
Orbi starts thinking it can use the Sonos as backhaul and some of that traffic gets blocked so random devices/requests fail. Super intermittently bad. Really would be cool if there was a way to prevent this issue, like making Sonos only support Sonos traffic.
This would entail deep packet inspection. Never going to happen. Besides, Sonos already stipulates that you shouldn’t wire to multiple WiFi mesh nodes.
My test (since Sonos doesn’t do a single thing to inform users when there is drop out—they should log: 100ms audio dropped on Zone is to play an HDMI source everywhere, mute everything, then turn zones up to hear them in the distance and listen for any variation or drop outs.
Such logs -- for example of packet loss percentages -- exist, but are internal to the system diagnostics, which only Sonos Support now gets to see. You could always run some intensive ping tests of your own.
So in my huge status table ... I have 20 Sonos nodes
Not that huge. 
Sonos only supports 32 nodes max max, right? So a few more little additions and I’ll be nearing the physical limit. Besides, there are like 10 undefined entries, what are these?
I think I have 40mhz channel width. What does this mean, that of 1/6/11 it spills over into an adjacent channel? Should I use 1 and 11 only? Things are so stable and reliable now I don’t want to touch a thing.
My rear right surround is bossy and likes handling communications for the throuple.
When a speaker cuts out 1ms I want to know because it means interference is building of I have a trash implementation. I want excess bandwidth, capacity, whatever. That’s why I spent these 50 hours messing with my system to finally have it physically communicating as I know is the most efficient with least network demand at every level. Perhaps now it can handle anything I throw at it. I hear the first chord everywhere now.
Correct: 32 nodes max per household.
The undefined entries on the matrix top row? Those could well be devices whose radio is disabled. Check their MAC addresses.
I think I have 40mhz channel width. What does this mean, that of 1/6/11 it spills over into an adjacent channel? Should I use 1 and 11 only? Things are so stable and reliable now I don’t want to touch a thing.
With 40MHz width, the Orbi on 11 will put its secondary channel on 7 so would stomp on SonosNet’s ch 6.
Either confine Orbi to 20MHz width (better solution) or use only chs 1 and 11 (worse solution as it continues to upset any neighbours who use ch 6).
40MHz at 2.4GHz is unsociable and should really never be used,
My rear right surround is bossy and likes handling communications for the throuple.
Totally unnecessary, but whatever.
20 vs 40? Think of a string of adjacent conference rooms in an office. Within each room there is parliamentary procedure such that only one person speaks at a time. Then the “smart guy” in an adjacent room decides that he will amplify his audio, which then breaks through to the adjacent rooms -- decreasing intelligibility. Of course the adjacent rooms could do the same, but because there is no cross room parliamentary procedure, intelligibility across the area tanks. Another way of looking at this is that a window is open in your conference room and there is a construction site next door.
Use 20Mhz on 2.4GHz unless you are so isolated that you need only channels 1 and 11.
