Avid Contributor I

SonosNet is a Mystery

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SonosNet does not activate when it absolutely should. I have talked to Tech support several times and followed that “converting to a wired setup” instructions procedure a dozen times. I’ve audio recorded the “click” that I hear when I plug my Ethernet cable into my one plugged in device more times than I can count, just to ask a friend and ensure that I did in fact hear the magical “click” sound.

When I check my setup, a half dozen speakers are in, hooray, “WM: 1”! If I remove my WiFi network from the app, all those speakers VANISH forever. It’s like they’ve given up on life and have no will to live. Even though supposedly there is a magical SonosNet blasting around everywhere. The only fix is to plug my physical Boost back in, and they magically re-appear! This Boost must have the magical key that gets them to connect.

The fix for this? RESETTING my entire system one-by-one. Tech support told me not to, their forums as well. But the moment I finished spending 30 hours trying to diagnose the issue, and switched to 2.5 hours resetting my 20 Sonos nodes, BAM it worked! My Beam became the node that every other speaker connected to. It’s the most central, newest, and most cable device that I own. Over SonosNet! All WM: 0

After a few weeks of fiddling with stuff, I’m back to where I was before. Half my speakers are green in the status panel and labeled WM: 1. Sure, my Orbi provides a lot cleaner signal than SonosNet, but I’m really just trying to get my 20 Sonos nodes to not cut. out. every. 10. milliseconds.

Can someone tell me why there is not a more forceful way to disable using home wifi? I want this prevented and never allowed. But then when I drop my WiFi, “some” of the speakers get dumb and forget how to connect to SonosNet. Why do they lose their ability to connect? I’ve power cycled each and all 20+ times. Once in a while they work with no rhyme or reason.

What gives? Why is this so complicated and confusing, even tech support was confused and thought that somehow my router wifi was interfering. Well guess what, after a full Sonos reset (going against all advice from tech/online) it worked flawlessly right away. Something is getting into a bad state.

Why did my Beam go from having colored boxes connecting it to every Sonos node to now having no colored boxes in the status table web page? It was doing exactly what it needed to, being the root node (albeit labeled Secondary for some unknown reason) and connecting to every Sonos node flawlessly. The system even performed halfway decent! I was able to stream HDMI audio to every zone pretty much perfectly. Until other nodes started taking over and then some hopped onto my home WiFi. Back to total disaster again. What gives? Why is there no more advanced configuration when you know the auto negotiation mechanism is failing and making bad choices.

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Ken_Griffiths

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.

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benn600Author

Avid Contributor I

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.

ratty

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.

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benn600Author

Avid Contributor I

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.

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benn600Author

Avid Contributor I

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.

ratty

Do you actually know what ‘root path cost’ means?

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benn600Author

Avid Contributor I

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.

Ken_Griffiths

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.

ratty

If you’re going to try and second-guess SonosNet’s topology computations it helps to have at least a basic understanding of STP.

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benn600Author

Avid Contributor I

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.

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