Cheers Smilja. I’ll put my thinking hat on.

My challenge is physical location of the WiFi broadcast. Achieving the above places it at one side of the house (or in a small cupboard under the stairs), rather than centrally, which creates a new problem sadly. Hmm, I’ll continue to test things… 

It’s very strange to me that this hasn’t been an issue before I upgraded to a more modern router. Yet playing around with router settings has not found the magic bullet just yet… The only other thing that’s changed is putting a switch in… however it’s nowhere near the sonos or router config, so I think it’s a coincidence (however I’ll think harder about this aspect too)…. 

@BunkMuffin, Purchasing a Boost would probably prove to be the straight forward solution.

So by purchasing this, I’ve a small box that can very easily follow my router, regardless of it’s physical location. 

Would a Boost then be the piece of hardware that all other Sonos components would connect to? 

If so, does it produce any interference with my router do you know? 

And finally, would a Boost solve any compatibility issues (which I think is what is happening) with the various Sonos components? 

Correct

Yes, but the same would be true of any Sonos player / speaker wired to a router.  And SonosNet iis a mesh in which every device is a potential repeater

Potentially, but if you keep the channels well separated it is unlikely to cause a problem.  Sonos was designed to be operated using SonosNet.

I don’t believe compatibility is an issue here - but putting the system onto SonosNet would mean that any 5GHz vs 2.4GHz issues go away.  Your controllers still need to be on the same subnet as your speakers.

The Boost is a pure networking device designed as network bridge to create SonosNet, if it’s inconvenient to wire a Sonos speaker to the router. Sonos has a generous return policy (from 45 to 100 days, depending on your location), if you purchase the Boost from them and the Boost doesn’t eliminate your performance issues with the Sonos system.

Ok, thanks for all this. I didn’t appreciate that, like a Mesh system, you can have multiple units “broadcasting a signal”. This might be my answer to getting good coverage across the house (including a bedroom above my garage(!)...

I am wondering whether I can try and get two Sonos components to be hard wired into something somehow… Either the Modem, or the Router. The former potentially being more likely with a little creative placement of hardware… 

I just now need to remember the process of getting my Sonos kit into wired mode. I think I need to get one speaker plugged into the router, switch to wired mode, then get another speaker plugged into the modem, then break the router / Sonos connection next so I’m then relying on SonosNet entirely. 

Out of interest, in wired mode (i.e. SonosNet) how does my iOS app then communicate with the Sonos hardware? In wirelss mode, it communicates via the 2.4GHz wireless SSID..? 

Cool. Thanks. 

You don’t need to ‘get your kit into wired mode’. Just wire one device. The rest will (or should) flip over within a couple of minutes. The About display should then show all as WM:0.

Once in wired mode, the Network Matrix at http://IP_of_a_player:1400/support/review starts to get interesting as it reveals a basic picture of the SonosNet mesh status.

Your phone sends info to your router, using whichever WiFi band your phone is connected by, then over the wired link to the wired Sonos component.  2.4GHz SonosNet is used for the communication between Sonos devices.

Note that you can’t wire two Sonos units if one is ‘upstream’ of the Asus router and one ‘downstream’. They’d wirelessly bridge the two subnets on either side of the Asus unit and cause addressing mayhem.

If the double-NAT arrangement causes problems in terms of what can be conveniently wired where, there is of course the option to just put the Asus router into Access Point mode. There’d then be a single flat subnet throughout. 

Ok, that so that’s the Captain Obvious bit that I’d missed, hence why wired connection to a “Modem” isn’t going to work ;)

Yep, thanks Ratty. I’d read something elsewhere that was similar. 

It basically means, that unless I want to cause a new WiFi range problem, and the try and solve this by buying another router or node for my Asus network, I need to either fix this wireless drop out issue through process of elimination, or purchase a Sonos Boost. 

Boost seems the cheaper option, with less likelihood of impacting something elsewhere in the network…

I appreciate everyone’s input so far. I’ve learned quite a bit this weekend. 

So far, I’ve managed to gradually bring everything back into the network. Conclusion is the system does not like WiFi 6… So I’ve put the 2.4GHz band into “compatibility mode” and reserved the 5GHz to WiFi 6… 

Now to let it settle down and allow time to give me an answer... 

As an update:

I continue to tweak settings including channels, static DCHP IP address for Sonos and roaming rules yet still experience drop outs...

I’ve found that my Ring Doorbell started dropping connections from the 2.4GHz band too. After moving this to the 5GHz band, I’ve had zero issues… This points me back tot he 2.4GHz band…

The Wifi 6 setting continues to be a red herring… so I’ve reverted back to “Wifi 6 mode” on 2.4GHz band...

My next route is to reduce the Channel Bandwidth. Presently, the router switches between 40 and 20MHz at will on the 2.4GHz Band. After a little research I understand that the 20MHz bandwidth setting is less likely to fall foul of interference… so that’s my latest setting change… 

Again, will let things bed in and see. At least by the end of this, I’ll have learned more about home network configurations...

Are you using an ASUS router? The new ones are incompatible with Sonos (and other gear) based on several other threads. You need to downgrade the firmware apparently to get a compatible one.

Thanks for this.

I’ve done a bit of digging and can find some threads, so will start to go through these. 

Right. I’ve rolled back my router firmware to version 384.9948.

I can see Sonos is already behaving differently on the network. 

Fingers crossed this works.

Nice one controlav.