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I’m posting this because I’d like to present you with information regarding wireless streaming of music services and how it relates to the available band width provided by your router. Before I start, I’m going to provide information about my ISP and network setup.

ISP

  • Google Fiber
  • 3G Plan (incoming)
  • $100/mo_USD

My Network  

  • Wi-Fi 7
  • Asus AiMesh with wired backhaul
  • Asus GT-BE98 Pro Router (main node)
  • Asus RT-BE96U Router x 2 (satellite nodes)

I’ll admit that my setup is not the typical network utilized by most consumers. It is high-end in terms of equipment cost which is approximately $1500_USD and ISP service. However, the principles are the same regarding performance of a network regardless of build and specifications.

This picture shows the Mbps hitting my router for download and upload which is approximately 3G as provided by my ISP Google Fiber. You need to understand that there is no consumer device currently available that can utilize 3G speeds. 

 

A consumer device with a wired connection over ethernet is limited to 10/100/1000 Mbps. The latter number for simplicity represents 1GB. Sonos is only capable of 100Mbps which is more than adequate.

The next picture illustrates what my “high-end” network equipment can provide over Wi-Fi. It may surprise you. 

As you can see my network over Wi-Fi can only utilize (broadcast) approximately one third (1/3) of the 3G provided by my ISP. Incidentally, the speed test was taken using my device used for Sonos which is an iPhone 16 ProMax.

To further illustrate what you might realize over Wi-Fi based upon your ISP plan here’s an example from a US based company called Spectrum. Looking at a plan offering 100 Mbps Internet speed you would realize about 33 Mbps through put over Wi-Fi which is one (1/3) third.

This is not to say that you need to upgrade your ISP plan. YMMV in your location with a similar plan. 

 

You might ask yourself why would I invest in expensive high-end network equipment and pay for 3G speed that I can’t completely utilize? 

Well, the answer is simple

  • I’m a Tech Geek
  • I want to future proof my network
  • I have many clients on my network to service not counting streaming of music, 4K movies and other data.

The slide below illustrates how many clients I may have “jocking” for bandwidth (wired or over Wi-Fi) at any time. Which at the writing of this post is 57 of which 31 are Sonos.

 

I might also add that I’ve been streaming Apple Music at Lossless quality via Sonos for over four (4) hours. Time stamp shows 9:22 am_CST. See picture below. It is now 1:50 pm_CST. 

Now that I’ve set the stage lets tie this together regarding your network. Using my ISP and network capture as an example you can possibly only hope for one (1/3) third of the bandwidth you pay your ISP to be captured over Wi-Fi, although YMMV. Understand that result must be shared by not only Sonos, but other Wi-Fi clients in your home.

I now want to provide you with some data regarding music streaming services. 

 

As you can see Apple Music uses more Mbps than Spotify. What that means if you are having trouble streaming Apple Music don’t reference Spotify as an example as it uses less bandwidth. Now of course it all depends on the quality of the streaming service your plan provides. Click here to read the full article.

Here's an AI generated explanation of how much incoming speed provided by your ISP is needed to sustain a stream of 7.46Mbps which is what is required by Apple music. Also pay close attention to the last bullet point.

 

So now looping back to the 100Mbps ISP plan your household may be in good shape for multiple streams. Just know that at any time Wi-Fi interference can affect the quality of your streams in addition to network configuration, type of stream (music, 4K video & data) and client load.

The take away is that drops and/or inability to stream a music service using Sonos in most cases can be traced back to your network and it’s ability to handle the client traffic barring any outages that may be reported by Sonos here

I'm on the bottom 500/500 tier of Quantum Fiber for $50 a month. Testing from a wired computer shows results very close to the 500/500 while my Wifi (Ubiquity access point and Netgate router to Samsung S9 fe+ tablet) reflects the lower wifi transfer rates, 535 down and 315 up.

Sonos usage for Amazon Music is so low it doesn't even show beyond ripples in the router's main traffic graph so I'venever given it a closer look.

Not sure who calculated the bandwidth for Apple Music Lossless above, but its about 2-3Mb/s with buffering, not 7.46Mb/s.

What’s with this 1/3 of bandwidth lost thing? I’m not following this. 

What’s with this 1/3 of bandwidth lost thing? I’m not following this. 

It didn’t say lost. It’s what you can hopefully expect to achieve over Wi-Fi vs your respective incoming speed from your ISP. YMMV. Go back and read the post again for clarity.

BTW… the post is provided for information purposes not to convince you one way or the other. As many in this community never think their network is at fault.

What’s with this 1/3 of bandwidth lost thing? I’m not following this. 

It didn’t say lost. It’s what you can hopefully expect to achieve over Wi-Fi vs your respective incoming speed from your ISP. YMMV. Go back and read the post again for clarity.

The issue is your post isn’t clear. 
 

oh I see you edited your post after I replied. The issue is It appears you are posting misinformation and I asked the question because I wanted to give you a chance to clarify. 
 

 

What’s with this 1/3 of bandwidth lost thing? I’m not following this. 

It didn’t say lost. It’s what you can hopefully expect to achieve over Wi-Fi vs your respective incoming speed from your ISP. YMMV. Go back and read the post again for clarity.

The issue is your post isn’t clear. 

Sorry it doesn’t for you. At least 2.5 people understand it. 😊 However, everyone processes information differently.

What’s with this 1/3 of bandwidth lost thing? I’m not following this. 

It didn’t say lost. It’s what you can hopefully expect to achieve over Wi-Fi vs your respective incoming speed from your ISP. YMMV. Go back and read the post again for clarity.

The issue is your post isn’t clear. 

Sorry it doesn’t for you. At least 2.5 people understand it. 😊 However, everyone processes information differently.

Your post is factually incorrect. I attempted to allow you to explain without calling you out but I see that was a mistake. 

What’s with this 1/3 of bandwidth lost thing? I’m not following this. 

It didn’t say lost. It’s what you can hopefully expect to achieve over Wi-Fi vs your respective incoming speed from your ISP. YMMV. Go back and read the post again for clarity.

The issue is your post isn’t clear. 

Sorry it doesn’t for you. At least 2.5 people understand it. 😊 However, everyone processes information differently.

Your post is factually incorrect. I attempted to allow you to explain without calling you out but I see that was a mistake. 

You think that bothers me? Well what are your facts!

It appears that it does bother you yes. That wasn’t my intention but my attempts to be polite were futile and it seems you are perma butt hurt.
 

Your whole post here is pretty much misinformation and maybe that was the point: troll bait, in which case bravo it worked on me. 

It appears that it does bother you yes. That wasn’t my intention but my attempts to be polite were futile and it seems you are perma butt hurt.
 

Your whole post here is pretty much misinformation and maybe that was the point: troll bait, in which case bravo it worked on me. 

What?? Just go to sleep. 😴 BTW…still waiting on your facts to correct my mis-information. That’s your home work assignment 😂😂😂😂😂

Completely arbitrary and pointless figure and it just depends on many factors, mostly the distance from the router/AP. I get almost full speed near the router and less the further away, like many I imagine.

Some get a kick out of posting how quick their Internet connection is, like my ****'s bigger than yours.  We all know your Internet speed ​@AjTrek1 , no need to post it weekly.

And my maths couldn't correlate a 67mbps speed from an available 100 as 1/3 either. 

What’s with this 1/3 of bandwidth lost thing? I’m not following this. 

It didn’t say lost. It’s what you can hopefully expect to achieve over Wi-Fi vs your respective incoming speed from your ISP. YMMV. Go back and read the post again for clarity.

BTW… the post is provided for information purposes not to convince you one way or the other. As many in this community never think their network is at fault.

Perhaps you should as your original post is inaccurate.

 

Looking at a plan offering 100 Mbps Internet speed you would realize about 67 Mbps through put over Wi-Fi which is one (1/3) third.

67/100 = 2/3


Such a long winded post that provides very little meaningful information. Unless a user is stuck in 1999, bandwidth is unlikely to be a concern.

Completely arbitrary and pointless figure and it just depends on many factors, mostly the distance from the router/AP. I get almost full speed near the router and less the further away, like many I imagine.

Some get a kick out of posting how quick their Internet connection is, like my ****’s bigger than yours.  We all know your Internet speed ​@AjTrek1 , no need to post it weekly.

And my maths couldn't correlate a 67mbps speed from an available 100 as 1/3 either. 

Watch your language!

Looking at a plan offering 100 Mbps Internet speed you would realize about 33 Mbps through put over Wi-Fi which is one (1/3) third.

Now your previous posts are being silently edited.

Anyone getting only 1/3 of the available bandwidth over Wi-Fi on a 100 Mbps connection should be contacting their ISP for a refund.

There are a couple different things intertwined here that may be confusing folks.

First the speed your ISP is promising you is what is available over their connection to you. What you see from a speed-test isn't directly related to the ISP's numbers, if your router (the routing subsystem) isn't able to pass the available data rates to the LAN port you are connected to you will not see the ISP numbers, rather you will see speed-test numbers that reflect the router's ability to pass data. That is based on the ability of the router and the demands you place on it with firewall rules and such. You, if on a faster than Gigabit connection, and depending on your router design may be able to run simultaneous speed-tests on multiple LAN ports, and see totals between them higher than you can get on an individual port. Connection quality, dropped-packets and ping times, are also important and can impact Sonos operation.

The Wi-Fi, internal to the router or external is a completely different issue, you won't see numbers higher than the ISP connection speed or the routing subsystems ability to pass data but you will see results that vary on a lot of factors. The connection type is a prime example, you can look up the speeds if you need that much detail. Next is the channel width, a 20 mHz channel will pass data slower than a 160 mHz one. Many more niggly bits impact connection speed, too many for here. Then you get to the most variable one, connection quality or signal strength as that can vary from moving your connected device a few inches.

Not much of the above applies to Sonos issues unless you are pushing your LAN or Wi-Fi close to their limits or have an iffy ISP connection. A decent router will provide you information on all of that, however far too many Wi-Fi systems are of little use in seeing the entire set of conditions impacting Wi-Fi speed and quality but you have to work with what you have.

 

 

 

I’m very interested in the connection latency. If the bitrate is high, but the latency is long, websites will seem sluggish. If the latency is really long, SONOS will not be able to reliably play remotely hosted music.

Years ago I had an older computer that could only accomplish about 450Mbps on a Gigabit connection. More modern computers could achieve 800+. But, the connection latency was very low (single digits). Using this slower computer I was working with a support agent on a product, unrelated to SONOS, that specialized in realtime response. My connection was so responsive that the agent asked if I was somewhere in the same industrial complex as his office and their servers. I was in an adjacent state.

I had an old Hughes satellite setup that happily delivered 1000 to 1300 ms ping times. Some stuff had no issues, web browsing needed a smart proxy to shortcut the latency, and simply trying to type into a remote text terminal brought back bad memories of 60 WPM Teletype connections. 

My current provider easily delivers single digit ping times in IP v4, but IP v6 times are easily double that in the middle of the night, evenings 50 ms or worse wasn't unusual, along with packet loss. Seems that ther Ipv6-rd gateway is badly overloaded. If I needed v6 I'd have to change providers.

If you ‘only’ get 1,092Mb/s download on an iPhone 16 using WiFi with an ISP connection of 3,416Mb/s, that indicates a hardware limit on the iPhone 16 and/or WiFi Access Point, maybe its time to think about upgrading the home network and iPhone if they are not performing? 😀

Hi all, we're closing this thread for further discourse as we believe the thread has run its course.

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