Why does one speaker show WM: 0 and another WM:1 when both are wireless?

I’m guessing that the speaker showing WM: 1 is too far to connect with SonosNet. Is this speaker in the detached garage?

Thanks for the response.

Correct, this speaker showing WM: 1 is in the detached garage which is not far from the house or the attached garage.  Split by the driveway parking pad.  Maybe 50 to 75 feet?

The other thing in the mix.  In this same detached garage, I have a Sonos Amp with speaker wires running to speakers at a basketball court.  That amp is wireless and is showing WM: 1 as well.

One other oddity to me.  There is a Sonos One in one of my kid’s room.  Middle of the house surrounded above and below by other Sonos stuff.  This one is showing WM: 1 as well. 

The Sonos Move is WM: 1.  

Every other Sonos devices in our set-up shows as WM: 0 aside fro these mentioned whether wired or wireless, set up as stereo pair, etc.

Looking through all my Sonos emails I’ve saved, Sonos support at one point told me to disable wifi on all my ethernet connected devices.  There seems to be much debate about that I guess.   Not sure if that’s related. 

Thank you.

It’s best to keep Wi-Fi enabled on all Sonos devices.

It’s no coincidence that the two speakers in the detached garage both show WM: 1.

Sonos portable devices don’t connect to SonosNet. So they will always show as WM: 1.

You should try unplugging the One in the kids room from power for a couple of minutes and see if it will connect to SonosNet after plugging it back in.

WM: 0 indicates units that are using SonosNet -- wired or wireless. Using that data, you cannot determine if a WM: 0 unit is wired or wireless.

The WiFi enable instructions are misleading. If you disable WiFi, this actually disables the radios and the disabled units will not be able to use SonosNet wirelessly. The only valid use of this network disable feature is when multiple wired devices are plied into an equipment cabinet. In this case, at least one unit should keep its radio enabled.

Appreciate the response.  I turned wi-fi back on each device.  

Is the Sonos One SL considered a portable device as it is wireless?  

I’m confused about one part.  You note Sonos portable devices will always show as WM: 1.   The ones in question are Sonos One SL.   I have 7 of the Sonos One SLs in my set-up.  Three of them show WM: 1 and the others all show WM:0.  

Thanks for the response.

So I think the reason I was told by someone at Sonos to turn off wifi was because I have an equipment cabinet that has 8 Sonos Connect Amps.  I was having some issue and at some point they told me to turn off the wifi as part of diagnosing/dealing with it.   Based on this thread, I’ve turned the wifi back on for everything for now including everything in that closet. 

I also have every device in that cabinet connected by ethernet.  I’ve read different things that some people think only one device should be on ethernet and others say connect all you can by ethernet.  I admit to still being confused about which way is better.

For now, my system seems to be more stable that it was before I had wifi turned off.  Thank you.

Allow me to settle the debate! 😂

More wired devices is almost* always better. The more recent editions of Wi-Fi (especially Wi-Fi 6) are incredibly fast and reliable, but when it comes down to you still can’t beat the reliability of a hard-wired copper connection if your product supports it.

The only time you should really need to limit to a single wired zone is if STP isn’t working on your network. (STP is a protocol that stops broadcast storms from happening, and those will grind your entire network to a halt if they occur.) Luckily, almost* every home router should support STP.

If you have some fancy enterprise equipment like managed switches, you might need to a bit of extra configuration to get it working, but once it’s on, you should be good to wire whatever you want without any fear.

So in conclusion, you should be okay to wire as many devices as you want in almost(*) every circumstance, and when you can do so easily it’s usually beneficial to do so.

* - “almost” - Incompatible network hardware

Really appreciate all the detail. 

One follow-up...I do have a Unify set-up in the house with a managed switch that my IT guru suggested I use.  I “wish” on some days he had not set up a managed switch as I’ve had to learn more about this than I wanted.  Ha.

I read up a little on the STP stuff before and I don’t think my Unifi switch was set up the best/right way on STP versus the other options, but I held off on touching anything and making changes.  

I just read through the link you added.  Thank you for that!  My system has a lot of wired devices but not all wired.   Still trying to digest if that means I should change the STP.  I’ll review it more.  

Thank you for such a thorough response. 

A few thoughts:

WM=0 means connected by Ethwrnet OR connected wirelessly by SonosNet.

WM=1 man's  connected wirelessly by WiFi..

The only portable Sonos speakers are the Move and the Roam. These speakers have batteries and so can play without a power supply.  They have no Ethernet port and cannot connect to SonosNet. They can only connect to WiFi and so will always show as WM=1.