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MidF
Contributor II
February 24, 2021

WiFi Range Extenders that don't cause intermittent connection problems for Sonos Move Speakers.

I recently purchased 2 sonos move speakers that are stereo paired and currently have them on the 2nd floor of my house. The main Xfinity gateway/router is on the first floor directly below the room with the move speakers. The other side of the 2nd floor has a wifi dead spot where I installed a EX8000 Netgear Nighthawk wifi extender which just failed completely and now needs to be replaced. What type of WiFi range extender would you recommend that will provide "seamless roaming" for my other devices but won't cause interference with the move speakers' connecting to the main wifi? (I had initial move installation problems that your tech said was caused by the Netgear wifi extender.)

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MidFAuthor
Contributor II
April 17, 2021

Followup:

I purchased and set up a Unifi NanoHD Access Point unit in my upstairs dead zone. I connected the AP to a port on the Ethernet switch already set up for my upstairs entertainment system which is obviously wired to the router downstairs (an Xfinity X1 Gateway). i was able to open the Unifi controller software on my laptop but did not tweak any of the default AP settings as i’m not sure what to do.

However, even without trying to optimize settings on the AP and maybe even the Xfinity gateway, the AP works “seamlessly” with my devices (iPhone, Macbook, iPad).

But moving the Sonos Move speakers back and forth from an area covered by the downstairs router and the upstairs area covered by the AP was not totally seamless. If the stereo-paired Move speakers were grouped with my Gen2 Play:5 and then carried to the AP-covered area, both Moves would often continue to play and playing could be stopped and started using the Sonos app, but sometimes one of the Move speakers would stop playing when carried to the AP zone. If I carried the Moves back to the router zone, the grouping with the Play:5 would be screwed up and the Sonos app would not recognize the Play:5 which continued to play the music originally started on it. 

Long story short - by some trial and error of closing and restarting the Sonos S2 app combined with turning off and on the affected speakers, I could get the Move speakers to work and be grouped as I wanted after being moved from one zone to the other. It’s somewhat annoying and certainly very frustrating for novice users but without a huge effort I was able to get the Move speakers to work in each zone with most scenarios I want. 

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