Setting up Sonos with Eero WiFi system

A
Userlevel 1
  • aph
  • Contributor I
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I have had trouble getting my Sonos system to work for the past few months, since installing an Eero WiFi system, and I wanted to share what I learned so that I help others avoid the headaches and hassle.

The problem: After installing a network of Eero WiFi devices (three eero Pro devices and one eero Beacon extender), my Sonos system stopped working reliably (would not connect, drop devices, etc.). I tried restarting, reinstalling units, etc., etc., without success.

The solution: Over the past two weeks, I have read a number of posts on this Sonos support site that helped me get the system working again today. Here is what I did and some comments on my system:

  • Enabled "Bridge Mode" on our Xfinity Wireless Gateway device -- got instructions on how to do so on the Comcast website (need to log in from your internet browser and follow a few steps)
  • Connected the eero Pro device that was indicated as the "gateway" (was the only device that my eero app showed as being the "gateway") with the Xfinity Wireless Gateway (Ethernet cord/connection)
  • Plugged our Ethernet switch to the other Ethernet port (the one not used to connect to the Xfinity Wireless Gateway) in the "gateway" eero Pro
  • Our other Eero Pros are connected to that same switch (or a second switch connected into the first switch)
  • Some of our Sonos devices are connected via Ethernet to the second switch
  • Other Sonos devices are connected to the eero WiFi network
  • I am able to control the Sonos system from an iMac connected via Ethernet to one of the eero Pros (not the "gateway" Pro, but another one that is wired into the first switch)
  • And, I am able to control the Sonos system from my iPhone using our eero WiFi network
  • So, it appears that everything is working again (fingers crossed)
So, that's what worked for me. My impression is that the critical steps were:

  • Enabling "Bridge Mode" on the Comcast/Xfinity modem
  • Connecting the "gateway" eero device to the Comcast/Xfinity modem
  • Then, connecting the switch, from which all other devices on our network stem from, to the other port on the "gateway" eero device
My thanks to all the other people who have posted to this support site. Your comments and ideas helped me figure out the solution above. My hope in posting this is that I can help others who have cable modems (like the Xfinity product) and eero WiFi. I'll check back in a couple times to see if others have questions that I can help answer. And, of course, my guess is that many others can edit and improve on what I've written above.

Thanks, again, to everyone who contributes to this site. I could not have gotten my system back up and working without all the help/support from this community.

controlav 2 years ago

There are some Eero notes on this page:

 

 

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33 replies

S
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Hi folks, glad i found this thread.  I have 8 sets of Sonos speakers in pairs or home theatre setups and a Eero Pro 6 mesh with 3 satellites all connected with 1GBb backhauls.  SonosNet is active for all except for pairs of Roams, Moves and Era100s.  Since I upgraded to the Pro 6 and 2Gb Frontier fiber, my speakers regularly drop, pause or cause general havoc as I tried to recover with manually power on/offs, reseting stereo pairs, etc.  I assumed most of the issues were due to various beta programs I participated in or my 10K song library.  Sonos Support always commented on the library size and the amount of WiFi interference in my setup which I assumed was due to 40+ zwave and zigbee devices throughout my house.

Thanks to a casual reference above, I turned off IPV6 on the Eero and have had no issues for two days listening to Apple Music 12 hours a day.  

Also, I have my Eero direct connected to the Frontier ONT in the garage.  I don’t have another router so the Eero is in Automatic (DCP & NAT settings) and not Bridge mode.  The Frontier serviceman who upgraded the ONT to support 2Gb confirmed that I could direct connect the Eero without the Frontier supplied router (Actiontec).   

Scott
L
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Hello!

Me again, the guy who said sonos and eero dont work so good, well that was a few days ago and I look back with nostalgia at what an idiot I was then. I've learnt more and I think the purpose of this forum is to educate so here goes…

Once you buy the eero you have a few choices.

1 plug one sonos device into your eero to make a sonos net that runs over the eero network

2 remove that cable from eero and make your sonos stuff run wirelessly over the eero network instead

3 or plug your boost into eero and make sonos run over it's own boost network 

4 finally -and this is what works best for me- you can also plug 1 sonos into your original router (that you are bridging with the eero) to make a sonos net that runs over the eero network.

I have no idea why this works the best for me and I also know that what has worked perfectly for 5 years can stop working tomorrow for a whole bunch of reasons so I think it's good to know all the different methods just in case.

Yahtzee!

Stanley_4
Userlevel 7
Badge +22

Just to confirm, you do mean Boost not Bridge? They are very different.

buzz

Which model SONOS unit are you using? There could be various causes for this issue, including a hardware fault in BOOST. As a test, power down BOOST and wire another unit to the network.

L
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Sorry

I should have been more clear. All my speakers are hardwired with actual speaker wire. I only have 6 sonos boxes that talk to the amplifiers that are physically wired to the speakers. So seven sonos units total if you include the boost  As I mentioned before, the boost was installed correctly and in about my system it said WM=0. Yet my performance is better when I dont use the boost with the eeros for whatever reason...

Stanley_4
Userlevel 7
Badge +22

Also with the single Boost you have only one connection point for the network to Sonos, with the router you may have had several, some closer to problem clients.

If you unplug the Boost and wire a non-sub/surround to Ethernet you won’t be bumping your Sonos device count which may help. If you wire more you start seeing the gains from the mesh as you do from your router.

I unplugged my Boost and wired every main Sonos speaker that was easy to connect and my system is far more stable. It also allows me to use any WiFi settings I want instead of restricting me to ones Sonos is happy with.

buzz

Physical placement of the BOOST might be an issue. BOOST should be kept about three feet from access points.

AjTrek1
Userlevel 7

Hello

24 speakers 6 sonos boxes 3 floors. Was having problems with dropouts and unable to add to the queue messages so I got an eeros system. Now everything works good in bridge mode but I noticed that when I set up the sonos boost it actually made things worse. I installed the boost correctly but it made the music dropout [less than before the eeros]. When I removed the boost no dropouts. But with the boost on the download speed on my playstation went up!

Conclusion: Sonos boost doesnt work so good with eeros but it does relieve pressure on the rest of the network. I listen to music more than play playstation so I removed it.

Cheers

Sonos will only allow 32 units on either home WiFi or SonosNet. Adding the Boost increased the total number of Sonos units to 31 placing you at the threshold for total number of Sonos units allowed. Being that close may have placed a strain on the SonosNet especially with 3 floors. 

The playstation experienced faster downloads on home WiFi as the Sonos units were theoretically no longer using substantial bandwidth on your home WiFi 2.4Ghz band.

Together Everyone Achieves More = T.E.A.M.
L
Badge

Hello

24 speakers 6 sonos boxes 3 floors. Was having problems with dropouts and unable to add to the queue messages so I got an eeros system. Now everything works good in bridge mode but I noticed that when I set up the sonos boost it actually made things worse. I installed the boost correctly but it made the music dropout [less than before the eeros]. When I removed the boost no dropouts. But with the boost on the download speed on my playstation went up!

Conclusion: Sonos boost doesnt work so good with eeros but it does relieve pressure on the rest of the network. I listen to music more than play playstation so I removed it.

Cheers

C

I was having same problem with EERO’s system; my iOS controller for SONOS was being intermittent.  Putting the EERO into bridge mode seems to have solved the problem.  Very wierd because the SONOS was “connected” via wifi only and I could determine it was up and stable on the mesh network but the iOS controller did not work.  It seems to NOW work in the BRIDGE mode on EERO’s.  Simple fix via settings and reboot.

Thanks, I’ve been through hours trying to solved this and you’ve helped in 2 minutes

A

Thank you. This has been driving me insane and is now solved thanks to bridging ! 

J
Badge +2

 I live in a large home 6,000 sq ft+with 10 Zones and a Sonos Boost. I’ve had nothing but issues with music dropping, resuming, dropping  etc… The only thing I could play through my entire system without the music dropping was Sirius. My Spotify would drop constantly, same with Tidal. My internet goes through a Telus Actiontec dual band router into a Eero Mesh system.

I’ve tried pretty much everything, disabled smart-steering on the Actiontec modem and setup the Sonos boost up on the 2.4ghz portion of the modem-That was a fail 

Plugged the boost into Eero in bridge mode- That was a fail

Tried changing wireless channels- That was a fail

I’ve rebooted, unplugged and factory reset everything like three times lol

 So, what has finally worked for me is ditching the Sonos boost altogether, keeping my Eero mesh system in bridge mode and connecting the whole Sonos system minus the boost to my Eero wireless network and so far (knocks on wood) no music dropouts at all on Tidal.

Thank you to everyone who has posted their solutions and what has worked for them and I hope my posting may help someone out too! :-)

controlav
Userlevel 7
Badge +23

It sure would be nice if Sonos could come up with a better solution to this problem when on Eero or other wifi mesh networks.  But for now I am happy again.   I can’t begin to describe how annoying it is to have a delay of about 0.75 seconds between the left and the right speaker in a room, but if you are reading this, you probably know what I’m talking about!

This is Eero’s problem to fix. Sonos just require a working local network, and Eero don’t supply that after devices choose to switch frequencies.

Author of the leading independent Sonos app for Windows, the only Sonos app for Xbox, and a Sonos app for iOS
D

OK, I was wrong in my previous message to think I had the problem solved.   Whenever I reset my Eero network, things usually start out synchronized, but over time they tend to desynchronize.

I was able to figure out that some speakers (such as my right speaker in the kitchen) were choosing to be on the 5GHz part of my Eero wifi network, and other speakers (such as my left speaker in the kitchen) were choosing to be on the 2.4GHz part of my Eero network.  But I wasn’t able to figure out how to get the speakers to stop doing that.

I finally talked to Sonos technical support, and we came up with a new solution.   When I went via my Sonos mobile app to Settings > System > Network, it turned out that both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks were listed as options, with an identical network name listed twice.  The tech-support person had me plug on one of my speakers in via Ethernet to my Eero router temporarily, as a precaution to avoid losing connection.   Once I’d done that, I deleted one of the two networks on that Settings > System > Network page.   That appears to have fixed the problem, removing the choice between the two networks so that they will no longer become desynchronized.

It sure would be nice if Sonos could come up with a better solution to this problem when on Eero or other wifi mesh networks.  But for now I am happy again.   I can’t begin to describe how annoying it is to have a delay of about 0.75 seconds between the left and the right speaker in a room, but if you are reading this, you probably know what I’m talking about!

D

I struggled a lot with my Sonic speakers getting out of sync once I switched from Comcast + Apple Airport Wifi to AT&T Fiber + eero wifi through the Sonic Internet provider:

https://www.sonic.com/

A call to Sonos was not particularly helpful.  They asked me to put my modem into bridge mode, and I accidentally put the Eero wifi meshnet into bridge mode instead.  Then I called Sonic for help.  They fixed the problem by switching eero to allow the devices to choose which wifi channel to use (the default setting, appropriate for older devices, was to have the eero choose the wifi channel for each device).   Unfortunately there was no way in the eero app for me to choose to do that for myself, but now that the setting has been changed, I’m having no problems.  The Sonos speakers are smart enough to choose to be on the same wifi channel as each other, and my network router is no longer interfering with their ability to do so.

controlav
Userlevel 7
Badge +23

There are some Eero notes on this page:

 

 

Author of the leading independent Sonos app for Windows, the only Sonos app for Xbox, and a Sonos app for iOS
S
Badge

I’ve had this problem and wish I’d found this forum earlier. Sonos support did email me to say ‘make sure that only one router is responsible for the DNS lookup and the others work in bridge mode’ but for me that was of academic not practical help.

The fix was to go into the Eero app on my phone, select Settings and then Network Settings and turn DHCP & NAT to Bridge. I’d probably unknowingly set it up wrong when the Eero first arrived. The Vodafone router now does the DHCP stuff as it’s supposed to and the Eeros don’t go into Gateway mode.

I can’t understand why Sonos Support still don’t connect mentions of Eero and I can’t see my speakers and explain the fix in more basic terms. 

System here is four Eeros, one a Pro, connected by ethernet, four TP Link switches and five Sonos units.

GoodVibes
A

Thanks so much - similar to others I spent HOURS working with customer service folks from both EERO and Sonia. Finally found this site- put eero network in bridge and Viola- music thanks so much
 

 

 

H

I also installed new eeros and I had the same problem and tried all sorts of restarts etc. Account, System, Services and Voice were all greyed out.

I tried both wireless but did not work. Then wired to my modem. That did not work. Then finally I just connected directly to the eero pod.

It worked perfectly.....till now. 

J
Badge +2

Thanks. My router is not in spot that is conducive for hardwiring a speaker. So I guess a Boost may be in my future. 
 

Now I need to decide what eero system to get. I was thinking the 3 pack that’s currently on sale, but I don’t have any hardwired devices, so all those Ethernet ports seem useless to me. 

Ken_Griffiths

In order to use sonosnet, does the speaker/boost need to be connected to the main eero, or could it be any eero?

It’s always best to wire the Sonos device to the primary eero hub rather than one of the eero satellites.

J
Badge +2

In order to use sonosnet, does the speaker/boost need to be connected to the main eero, or could it be any eero?

J

I also went through hell with this. Constantly restarting my network hoping that Sonos would be found. Sometimes it would only find one room, other times all three. There are two ways to bridge the network. You can use the comcast provided gateway as the bridge, and use EERO as the router, or use EERO as the bridge with the gateway carrying the water. I had no problem bridging the EERO, but I got greedy and tried the opposite, logging online and bridging the modem/router and opening up the EERO to do the work. That was a mess and I lost all internet services, forcing me to call comcast (!!!%$) to get them to unbridge my router/modem. I now have the EERO as the bridge, and all seems well. Some have suggested that you lose some EERO functionality (profiles whatever that is) this way, but that the meshing of the signal will still work just as well. I’ll be happy if I can enjoy music when I want for a change. I’ve been fighting this for over a year. 

Airgetlam

While I agree with the switch to bridge mode, I’d caution about the use of a Sonos BRIDGE at this point. The BRIDGE is an old product, and is S1 capable only. They are known to have issues with power supplies, which due to voltage variation can cause issues that are somewhat frustrating to track down.

Several years ago, Sonos replaced the BRIDGE with the Sonos BOOST, which not only has a CPU capable of running S2, but better WiFi antennas, a faster version of SonosNet, more interference rejection, etc. I’d certainly suggest anyone still running a BRIDGE to consider upgrading to a BOOST, or simply wiring their ethernet cable to one of the speakers directly, and retiring the BRIDGE.

Bruce
R

After struggling for months with connection issues, restarts, reinstalls, etc...I believe the switch to Bridge mode solved my problems. There were various ways suggested to move to Bridge but mine was as simple as a few others suggested in this thread - change the setting on my Eero app. 
 

Settings —> Advanced—> DCHP & NAT —> Bridge —> reboot eero —> reboot ATT U-verse router. 
 

It’s only been 2 days but no issues since (THANK GOD). Fingers crossed and thank you all on this thread for your help!!

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