Hi ​@kingebeng 

Thanks for your post!

Sorry to hear of the issue you’ve had with playing AirPlay across VLANs on Era devices.

The linked-to topic was closed due to 3 months of inactivity, as all such topics are.

We are aware of the behaviour and are investigating. At present, I have no estimate for when a fix might be made available.

I agree that the post marked as the Best Answer in the previous topic was not the best post to be marked as such and I have changed it.

I hope this helps.

Moderator Edit: Incorrect.

Hi ​@kingebeng 

Correction:

The current behaviour with AirPlay is the intended behaviour. We do not support the use of VLANs at all, nor do we support the use of AirPlay across them.

If it worked before, that was truly a happy accident - it not working now is not something that we are planning to address.

I will be changing the marked Best Answer on the other thread back to the original.

Apologies for any confusion.

​@Corry P Thanks Corry. 

However if I see ​@FedUpCustomer his reply, there is a bug being reported. 

Can we as customers please request a followup to be done in this Thread in case of any updates are there? 

We really would like to have this somehow being fixed in up-coming updates. 

Hi ​@kingebeng 

Yes - there being a ticket for the issue was what prompted me to make my now greyed-out, erroneous response.

The ticket was created because the person who created it (probably the agent referred to) was themselves unsure of the intended behaviour.

The intended behaviour is in fact that AirPlay should not work when bridging VLANs.

We simply don’t support the use of VLANs at all, and for very good reasons - I don’t see this ever changing, frankly.

I hope this helps.

“The intended behaviour is in fact that AirPlay should not work when bridging VLANs”.

Except that that was never the behavior before October 2024. The product worked perfectly fine over VLANs until the enshitified Sonos decided to block that capability.

Perhaps now that Sonos has showed us how brave they are by introducing a bold new app, they can further role model their leadership by telling Apple that Sonos has implemented AirPlay better than the company that wrote the standard.

But don’t listen to me, I was one of those users that was stuck in the past, wanting to listen to music from my local library instead of paying for Sonos Radio. I got rid of my Era 100 and bought an Apple HomePod. It works perfectly fine over VLANs.

If I were you, I’d do a Google search on Sonos and VLAN.  You will see dozens of threads and questions going much farther back than Oct. 2024.  So your particular circumstances may have been working, but it wasn’t some changed policy by Sonos that blocked the capability.  Sonos has never claimed to work over VLAN’s, either before Oct. 2024 or after. 

Sonos Era 100 responded to Precision Time Protocol requests on ports 319 and 320 before the October update. It stopped responding after that update.

You can play word games all you want - the functionality ceased to work after the update. Sonos made a decision to implement that change. Apple, BlueSound, LG and plenty of others have AirPlay implementations that don’t block PTP over VLAN.

Yes, Sonos never publicly claimed to support AirPlay over VLANs, but there is nothing in the AirPlay standard that prevents it from working over VLANs. And Sonos didn’t have to add anything to make it work over VLANs. Sonos did have to change something to make it stop working over VLANs.

Using your same logic, Sonos has never claimed to support TCP/IP...we all just assumed that because it runs over Wi-Fi it automatically supported TCP/IP. I guess they can take that away any day and you’ll tell us we were unrealistic for expecting Sonos to support something they never claimed to support.

Sorry, should have noticed the username before I replied.  Anybody who just signs up to complain isn’t worth my time.  Toodles!

there is no any benefit for SONOS to block this… 

there is no additional work for SONOS to invent something, it is basically making sure that it re-enables the pre-2024-OCT way of working… 

The older products do still work over different VLANS (!!) like the BEAM, MOVE etc...

Hello ​@Corry P,

Thank you for the information and the “official” position from Sonos on this matter. I’m curious when this similar change will be rolled out to the older hardware.

As ​@kingebeng and ​@FedUpCustomer mentioned, AirPlay across VLANs continues to work with older hardware. Prior to the Oct 2024 update, it also worked with the newer hardware.

If the strategy from Sonos is to start blocking AirPlay across VLANs, could you give us a timeline for when that will be rolled out across the entire product lineup.

Cheers,

Tim

Someone posted a link to the Airplay spec that said the TTL on the packets is supposed to be 1, so how is that going to work across VLANs anyway?

This https://forum.netgate.com/topic/104961/anyone-have-a-guide-for-getting-airplay-working-across-subnets-with-avahi/4 says “ The AirTunes limitation you're referring to is an Apple policy decision, not a technical issue. It appears they've restricted iTunes<–>Airport streaming media connectivity to connections that originate and terminate on the same subnet”

More info on why Airplay doesn’t work across subnets: https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5954/what-exactly-is-required-to-make-airplay-work-across-vlans

I think that’s enough for me on this thread.

Hi ​@tim_p 

I am not aware that there is a strategy in this regard - we are not doing any work on this at all. As I mentioned, if it worked before, that was merely a happy accident. I would not expect any changes from the current situation.

I hope this helps.

Hi ​@Corry P

I got the same problem – I can no longer Airplay to my ERA 300 across VLAN when it previously worked. The ERA 300 is available as an Airplay target, it just won't accept the connection. My other Airplay targets (appleTV’s and AirPort Express-connected speakers) all work perfectly fine across VLAN. I can even control the ERA 300 across VLAN with the Sonos app, only Airplay remains broken. The “happy accident” that made Airplay work across VLAN for Sonos before the update, seems to be the default behaviour for Apple’s own implementation of Airplay. Very much like ​@FedUpCustomer, I can’t understand why Sonos is content with an inferior Airplay implementation, in particular when knowledgable users like ​@tim_p has provided ample of details to exactly what’s going wrong. It would make many users really happy to see that “happy accident” be re-implemented. IMHO Sonos need not support bridging VLAN officially, but if claiming Airplay support, it should not be content with a lesser implementation than Apple’s own (which works perfectly well bridging VLANs).

Any chance you would consider sharing why Sonos would not consider supporting Airplay across VLAN? What is the purpose of the ERA 100 PRO that officially does NOT support bridging VLAN? Why would anyone who is security/privacy conscious enough to appreciate the physical microphone switch put smart speakers on their users default company VLAN? 

Cheers

Hi ​@Zappp 

I don’t have that information available to give to you.

We appreciate your feedback, and it will be submitted as a feature request. Currently, Sonos needs to be within the same VLAN to work.

I hope this helps.

​@Zappp what network, specifically bonjour gateway are you using between your VLANs? Could the happy accident be related to how the bonjour gateway is configured? 

hi ​@craigski 

I don't think so, as it used to work and stopped working about the time everyone else on this thread started reporting the issue. I’m on a Ubiquity Dream Router, with the Airplay VLAN walled off from the private VLAN, to which my Sonos controllers (iPhone/Mac) are connected to. Established & Related traffic allowed from Airplay VLAN back to private VLAN. mDNS enabled for both VLANs, and mDNS proxy enabled only for Apple Airplay service, IGMP snooping and fast leave enabled for both VLANs. 

Can you Airplay across VLAN’s to an ERA 100 or 300? 

Cheers

I have not attempted to, as I don’t see a requirement to run an enterprise network at home, although I do have a  totally isolated VLAN for guests. I tend to prefer less hassle than more complication, life is too short 

Yeah, I can relate to that. But putting IoT devices and smart speakers in a separate VLAN on my home network kind of follows the same logic as configuring an isolated VLAN for guests at home, doesn’t it?  

Not if the controller for those devices is on a different VLAN, no.

Go grab a cup of coffee, take a step back and ask yourself what you are actually trying to achieve and why? Is there something very special and precious on your home LAN that is not already secured? Then put that on a separate isolated VLAN away from your other devices.

I can certainly understand the frustration around a piece of functionality suddenly breaking without warning. And the concept of network segmentation and isolation is not new - I don't think it’s unreasonable to ask for notice of breaks to functionality or an architecture that can easily fit into a segmented network. I just doesn’t seem like it’s a priority for sonos or most of their users.

I haven’t tried it myself but I’ve heard good things about WiiM and it seems like this is functionality that may be supported. Although using the WiiM app on a separate VLAN doesn’t seem to work, similar to Sonos.