I’m posting this in hopes of saving someone else from the hours of frustration I’ve endured to resolve this issue.
From the time I set-up my Arc + Sub + Surrounds system in July with an Asus RT-AC88U router (connected to Fios Gigabit internet) it has worked without issue. I’ve used Asus Smart Connect with all settings at default. No problems with the S2 app and no problems when I upgraded to an iPhone 12, other than the loss of Trueplay support, which continues to be a problem. (HELLO Sonos! Anyone home?)
Then I recently upgraded to the RT-AX86U using same Smart Connect default settings and, initially, all seemed fine. But soon the dropped connections started. I’d reboot and the Sonos system would connect for 10-30 minutes, then lose wifi connection again. Meanwhile, all other wifi devices in my home worked just fine--the Sonos was the only problem child.
I did all the troubleshooting I could, then called into Sonos support and spent almost 2 hours with a tech rep trying every potential solution possible, but nothing worked. (However: KUDOS to such extraordinary tech support!) He then escalated the issue to an appointment with the Senior Support Team.
Meanwhile, I went into the router settings once again, looking for anything that might be an issue--even though I had gone through them all with the tech rep, and these were all the same settings that had worked on the AC88U. On a whim, and not expecting it to help, I turned off the QoS feature, which I have set to prioritize bandwidth for media streaming over other tasks. BINGO. That was it. Sonos system has stayed connected ever since. I can’t explain why that would be a problem--I’ve always had the QoS set that way, and with gigabit service, an AX router, a modest load of wifi clients in my apartment and no gaming, there should be bandwidth aplenty. But that was the issue and it’s finally solved.
Thanks for posting and sharing with us what you did to figure this out.
We highly appreciate your time and effort working through this.
Surely, it will benefit those members that might encounter the same issue and look for answers here in the community.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.
Cheers!
Same story, everything was great, upgraded to AX86u router, and now the Sonos system is unusable.
I’ve got QoS turned off, and Airtime Fairness is Disabled on both bands, but no success.
Will try calling tech support when I have a few hours to burn.
+1. With QoS enabled, I couldn’t add a new speaker to the system, couldn’t play music on speakers, speakers keep dropping, etc. Spent lot of hours troubleshooting. My system started working seamlessly when I disabled the QoS feature.
I use Asus ZenWiFi AX6600 (XT8) router
i have disabled airtime fairness (it was by default) and disabled QoS.
still no success. plugging it in did not work either and was a massive pain in my ass since i can’t get it off the stand and had to hold it up above my head to get it to power.
ANY advice?
If turn off Qos does not work, try down grade firmware back to 3.0.0.4_384_9318, it works for me after 2weeks of try to fix Sonos one and Playbar because my Sonos one SL is working so the problem must be the speaker. My router is Rt-AX 86U.
Hi everyone. Thank you for your patience in this. It will be helpful to submit a diagnostic report on the Sonos app after a few minutes when the issue happens and reach out to Sonos Support,as we can take a closer look and discuss it with all of you individually in real-time.
I suggest contacting our phone team, for they have more resources available for advanced troubleshooting, and the tools our agents can use would be very useful in this case, there can be an advantage if they need to remote into the controller to see what's going on.
If you have any other questions or concerns, feel free to reach out.
Issue with upgrade of Asus RT-AX86U firmware is still an issue.
Yesterday I did the router upgrade and immediately ran into severe problem with my Sonos equipment.
(I was not aware of that this upgrade was a problem for Sonos users)
Google assistant stopped working and so did TuneIn and Spotify.
Tried to put all devices in setup mode, to make a fresh installation.
But I only got intermitent acces to the Sonos equipment.
Tried also lots of changes in router, such as; QoS setting, Bandwith and channel number for 2.4GHz WiFi, turning of traffic collection etc..
Everything else connected to our home network worked without any problems.
Also all streaming services to other devices worked as expected.
Gave up and downgraded the firmware to recent version and all our Sonos equipment worked like a charm again.
I never thought this would solve it for me, but it did, once I disabled QOS, straight away both disconnection issues stopped (i finally managed to register my Sonos Beam) and google assistant worked again! Hopefully It’ll stay this way.
Hey All,
Everyone that are still having issues, I called support yesterday and they have been super helpful.
They helped me change something and I’m on the latest version of the firmware and have not had disconnections in the last 24 hrs. I have a RT-AX86U on 3.0.0.4.386_41535
Here is my 2.4GHz settings (I’ll try enable AX mode and Target Time to Wake later on as these were my own changes but I just need some stability right now!):
Hi,
I have upgraded my router to RT-AX86U too and was having a lot of problems.
Sonos disappeared / cannot be found randomly
Lost control on music playback, unable to pause/skip, then it lead to point 1
Reboot usually bring back online but same problem repeat
My setup: Asus RT-AX86U as main router, 2 x AIMesh nodes using RT-AX92U.
After trying everything listed here - QoS turned off, and Airtime Fairness is Disabled, it seems to bring back the streaming playback capability. However, when I performed TruePlay tuning, it kept having errors stating Speaker problem”.
Anyone of you having same problem?
Seems like Asus RT-AX86U with AIMesh doesn’t really work well with Sonos.
Hey @Evielwine, the only way I managed to get things working again is back to the old firmware ( Version 3.0.0.4.384.9318 ). No issues every since. Unfortunately the changes I made above only lasted a few days before things disappear again.
Hey @Evielwine, the only way I managed to get things working again is back to the old firmware ( Version 3.0.0.4.384.9318 ). No issues every since. Unfortunately the changes I made above only lasted a few days before things disappear again.
Thank you @altyz, I purchased this router mainly because of the AIMesh function, I really don’t feel like downgrading firmware where all other things are working well except Sonos… I guess as interim every time when I want to use Sonos, I just have to reboot first… :(
Try to factory reset the router after firmware update, it worked for my Asus RT-AX58U router. My Sonos Beam always disconnecting from wifi before and after firmware update until I did the factory reset thing.
Still sitting on firmware that's from October because Asus can't play well with Sonos.
Sonos should probably encourage customers to go for other router options. I would have chosen something else had I known.
I have not used stock Asus firmware in years--I always use the Asuswrt-Merlin firmware from rmerlin, and many Asus users swear by it. It’s also free, which is great, though rmerlin does accept donations. If you’re not familiar with it, Merlin isn’t tweakware for tech geeks--the focus is on fixing bugs in the stock firmware, better overall stability and improving performance. The interface is almost a duplicate of Asus stock. And Merlin now supports the AX-86U. (I suggest using the latest version in the “Release” folder, not the Beta folder) Since I started this thread 3 months ago, my general experience has been that I lose connection to Sonos Arc system about once a week. The fix is generally easy: turn the Asus off, wait a few seconds, turn it back on. The connection to Arc is usually restored. (First the Arc shows up in the Sonos app, then Subs and Surrounds within a minute or a few at most.) Occasionally, maybe once a month, I’ll have to reboot the Arc, too, to reconnect, but never the Sub or Surrounds.This isn’t perfect, but the hassle is minimal, and a far cry from the constant drops that I was experiencing for a while.
I have the AX86U, using the latest firmware 3.0.0.4.386.42095. For me to get things to work with my Sonos speakers, I have to turn off the guest network and the 802.11ax / Wi-Fi 6 mode for both 2.4 and 5 ghz. I’ve been working with Asus since the 3.0.0.4.386.41535 version broke Sonos to try and get this fixed. They can’t seem to figure it out.
I'm willing to try the merlin build, but I'm not holding my breath. I'll make sure I can still get the old firmware, or still have it saved, before I give it a go.
Other than the sonos issue, I can't complain about the asus firmware. Since the sonos speakers are used all the time, that's a pretty big issue. Since we're mostly wfh, having a good reliable home network is super critical though. Maybe merlin can deliver.
A few things I’ll note about my AX-86U settings--not sure any of this is relevant to the performance I’m getting, but fyI--and if you want to know about any other settings, please let me know and I’ll post.
I use SmartConnect so 2.4 and 5GHz bands appear as one network name and the Asus directs traffic to the “best” band in real time. Or so they say, lol.
Guest networking is off--not because of Sonos, I just don’t need one.
2.4GHz control channel is set to 6. I’ve had problems with Sonos connections when control channel is set to Auto. Of course, hard to say definitively if the Auto setting IS what causes the dropped connection issues, but it “seems” to contribute to them. Since I’m having good results with 6, I’m sticking with it. 5GHz is set to auto, but not a factor since Sonos in 2.4GHz only.
I am not in a wifi friendly environment--I live in a 250 until apartment bldg in NYC, so plenty of wifi usage around me… but this was never an issue with my AC-88U.
Just wanted to add to this as I’m having the same issue with my setup (RT-AX86U, Arc + Sub Gen 3).
Constant dropouts of the gear within the Sonos app > reboot fixes it for all of 5 minutes.
I’ve just updated to Merlin’s latest beta firmware > factory reset the router then reapplied my existing config settings.
Set my 2.5GHz channel to Band 6, 20 Hz, disabled wifi 6.
Was working overnight and will check again this evening after spending 12 hours at work but suspect the issue will remain.
I’ve stuck with Merlin’s latest “Release” version of the firmware. I see he has posted a couple of beta builds of what will become the next release version when finished, But since I’m now only getting a dropped connection once a week—maybe twice on occasion—I can easily live with that and don’t want to chance messing it up. I remember what it was like when connections dropped again within 5 mins after a total reboot—that was really painful.
Just got home and connected to wifi and it's still working on the app so fingers crossed one of the above settings has somewhat remedied it. At this point once a week dropouts would be great. Early days but I'll update this post if anything further develops.
I might try to use the Merlin asuswrt firmware this weekend, but it also sounds like people are having to disable numerous options that are important for my situation. We live in a terrible wifi environment with a big mix of devices (Sonos, google TV, two people usually WFH on laptops, phones, etc). Smartconnect and auto channel selection are a big help in keeping everything connected and humming along. As it is I just had to run a cat5 cable down the hall to keep my partner online during her work meetings.
A thread I found on the small net builder forum said the wifi driver part of the asus firmware is closed source. So even in the asuswrt builds I think that’s a black box. I am interested to hear how things are working for people. I just don't have tons of time available where I can bring everything offline to screw around with this stuff.
Brufleth, I’m having good success staying connected and run my AX-86U with SmartConnect on, so I would rule out SmartConnect as the cause of the issue. I do think that setting the control channel on 2.4GHz band, as opposed to auto, might be important, but hard to know for certain. What we do know is that the 2.4GHz band can be especially problematic in terms of interference, and that the three channels which don’t overlap other channels are 1, 6 and 11. I picked 6, but all three would be worth trying.
Fyi, I used to have QoS turned on, with media streaming as a priority, but I now keep it off. Whether that’s important is hard to know, I’m just keeping the settings that have given me the best results for keeping Sonos connected.
I'll give this a try hopefully this weekend. I wonder if setting that 2.4GHz channel is really what's important. Sounds like it might be the key to at least getting merlin working dependably. Thanks! I'll let you know how it goes.
Besides, disabing the Guest Networks and turning off 802.11ax/ Wi-Fi 6 modes for both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz, I also have the following:
SmartConnect disabled
QOS disabled
Airtime Fairness disabled
Universal Beamforming enabled - some people have said to disable this, but I’m not sure. Disabling didn’t seem to do anything.
Control Channel set to Auto
With these settings, my Sonos devices stay connected. Do any of you have the Guest networks enabled? I will try this weekend to enable the Guest Networks and Wi-Fi 6 and set the channel to 6 and see if it works.
