Here we go again...

I would just call your router and extender access points HighChapparall_2G for their 2.4Ghz bands and set those to fixed channel 11, rather than ‘Auto’. 

Similarly, just call your router and extender access points HighChapparall_5G for their 5Ghz bands and set those to fixed channel(s) too, rather than ‘Auto’.   

Add both bands/SSID’s to your Sonos App network settings as mentioned previously - if problems persist, then it will likely be that SSDP multicast discovery/broadcast is not working correctly over the entire subnet, either between the two bands, and/or between the two different access points, which is not unheard of with a few devices …and there maybe other settings available on your router/access point that ‘may’ need to be set, such as IGMP snooping, or in some cases you may have to enable multicast and broadcast data if that is set to ‘disabled’ on the device by default ( …just as examples of some device settings).

Finally, channel 1 for SonosNet for all the non-portable Sonos devices should be fine.

I hope that information assists.

Thanks Ken, I will play around with this some more, but my wife and I also use the wifi for work and I’m hesitant to make adjustments like this sometimes, hate to mess up everything else that’s working.

So in your experience its fine to have the SSID the same for the router and the extender? (for a given frequency band I mean).

We have TVS and stuff all setup so adjusting these name is possible, it might be my best bet for now to just adjust the HighChaparral_2GEXT in the extender to be named HighChaparral the router also only supports 2.4 GHz.

That way only casita stuff might be impacted and the only 5G access anyway is via the extender so leaving that as is makes sense.

In the past all my WiFi access points had the same name/SSID for their 2.4Ghz band - Localnet_2G …and the 5Ghz band was called - Localnet_5G, I didn’t want my ‘Move’ device to use the 2.4Ghz band, so I put that on the 5Ghz band only. I therefore just added the Localnet_5G to my Sonos system via the network settings in the App.. however all my non-portable devices ran on SonosNet, rather than my WiFi - I just mainly used the access points for connecting my controller (and the Move) to the LAN.

Of course network changes can take a while to do sometimes - I’m just offering some suggestions but it’s entirely upto you what bits you choose to take onboard - I’m just trying to provide you with some suggestions, that’s all.

Yes, that’s interesting I may have been hasty, I just checked again here’s what I actually see:

Three zone players connected to the network:

Now, this is most odd:

According to the router the same three zone players are all connected via ethernet not wifi !!

But only one is connected by cable the other two are definitely connected over wifi, they are in the casita with me now!

So this is the actual status of these.

I am supposing that the wired device is well, wired and the other two are connecting to that unit over the artifical “SonosNet” wifi network that I saw mentioned during setup, that is “mesh” I am guessing, the wired PLAY3 is generating a distinct SSID (but I can’t see it listed on my phone...)

For that reason they appear as devices that are connected via the physical LAN cable, this seems to explain what I’m seeing.

OK they do all have WM:0 (all three) as for the ROAM that is yet to appear, it has not appeared on the network despite many attempts.

I’ll do as suggested later, rename the extender SSID for 2.4 GHZ to be the same as main gateway’s SSID (they already share the same password).

Thx

In an ‘ideal’ Sonos setup, what most users aim for is the controller mobile device attached to the same access point linked to the wired ‘root bridge’ device. If the mobile controller switches to a different WiFi access point altogether, which has a different SSID (as you have in your own current setup) then the Sonos App will see this as a different Wifi network and look for devices that are then on that network, which might not be any, if you do not have that SSID stored in your network settings in the Sonos App.

I would personally choose to add that network SSID to your list of networks in your Sonos App network settings - in my own case, I prefer to have the same SSID name for all the WiFi access points on the network, but people have varying views about this.
 

That said, the most important factor is that all Sonos devices and controllers must be on the same network subnet and the communication across all needs to support SSDP multicast/broadcast for the discovery of the devices. This is usually simple in a single central wifi access point network, but it can become more complex in some cases, where different access points form part of the network that use different SSID’s and WiFi channels/channel-widths, as the communication can become interrupted.

Just when you thought it was safe…

Sonos explicitly doesn’t support extenders. When the Roam is attached to the extender there’s likely to be a warning message whenever one goes to group any of the players in the system (not just the Roam).

I’d also note that a good number of extenders, including older Netgear units, mangle the MAC address of attached clients, substituting a virtual MAC for the device as seen from the router side. This can result in the client IP address changing as it moves between up- and downstream of the extender (the DHCP server sees a different MAC in the request) and ARP caches can go stale. 

The effect could be that a controller loses the players, and players lose the controller, at least temporarily.

Ratty, what are you referring to? I’d be interested to learn more about your concern.

Everything is running fine now, but I noticed unlike before, I can now group the ROAM with the other PLAY3 units, I was not allowed to do that earlier!