Hi.  Do you have any other Sonos products?

hat sort of network do you have>?  Mesh?  Extenders?

Is any Sonos device wired to your router?

No other sonos prods. 
regular Internet with extenders. 
nothjng wired to router. 
 

worked for 4yrs, then about a month ago started dropping one item

Although it has worked for 4 years, extenders are not supported by Sonos, and behaviour can be unpredictable.  What happens if you experimentally turn off the extenders?  Is one of the Connects close enough to your router to temporarily connect it by Ethernet?

No.  Ethernet wont be possible.

What is strange is that the Sonos App acknowledges both units by correct serial number and will connect both at the same time like it has for the the last 4 years without issue) but lately it only stays that way for short periods of time.  It also will connect each unit individually but bump the other one off when it does that.

I suspect it is something to do with the extenders.  Sonos devices and controllers need to talk to each other constantly and if the Connects or controllers are flipping between extenders or router then communications can become disrupted.

Hey Guys, This thread caught my interest as i’m getting really fed up with the temperamental nature of the Sonos S2 app recognising devices and not, also if they do appear in my list, i often get the error message ‘Can not connect to device’. The suggestion of extenders caught my eye as i suspected this to be the reason for a while. Is there a way to force the device to look for the Wifi signal coming from the main Wifi router?

There is no way to “guaranty” the networking, when two devices are using the same SSID, but if you unplug the extender, the Sonos will connect to the signal it can “see”...but there’s no guaranty how long that will maintain. 

Ok thanks - Good feature request for the Sonos team to consider or provide extender support. For stability this means i need to potentially remove my device from the extender area as my home office is reliant upon the extender

It’s been a request since Sonos was released, so I wouldn’t hold out much hope, but who knows. 

A solution that would almost certainly work would be to wire one speaker to the router, or get a Boost and wire that.  This takes the Sonos off your WiFi and makes flipping between extenders  irrelevant.  Sonos was originally designed to work in this way and so a solution has always existed. That is another reason why Bruce is correct to say “don’t hold your breath”.

Hey John, Thanks for the advice, the 2 sonos devices in question are to far away with no cable route available to wire them frustratingly.. If i could i would however that sort of defeats the purpose of being a wireless sound system right..

Little bit more testing tonight, i killed the offending extended to see what would happen and sure enough consistently the devices appeared however i lost wifi to my laptop in my office… thinking i might have to configure the extender to have it’s own SSID that my laptop connects too and have the lappy operating in a parallel but disconnected network. Not ideal however i can run the sonos off my phone which seams to pick up the wifi much stronger.

You normally only need to wire a single Sonos device to get all running on a SonosNet signal - so you could add a Boost, or another Speaker, for example, near to your main router and that may resolve your issue. If you buy from Sonos there is a returns policy that you could use in the unlikely event that it didn’t help 

As Ken says, wiring one device, which could be a Boost, does not ‘defeat the purpose of being a wireless sound system’.  There is a simple solution to your issue, none of your speakers needs to be wired.  I have a seven room Sonos set up with one device wired.  I have fund that using SonosNet gives me a completely stable system.  One wired device allows the SonosNet mesh to talk to the router WiFi.  

Obviously there is an expense involved and it is your call whether it is worth it to you.

Ah gotcha John, So what you are saying is that the Sonos device that is in my office could be wired bypassing the extender next to it giving stability of service for which it would then provide a mesh to the other device which is further away but probably trying to feed off the Sonos in my office, which because it is currently unstable in itself becomes unstable. The things you learn. Alright, i think this can be achieved. 

@AntMcCabe,

This support document and informative diagrams shows the difference between wireless and (wired) SonosNet mode - SonosNet is Sonos’ own built-in wireless mesh connection between their devices.

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3235

Well my mind has been blown this morning - thank you very much @Ken_Griffiths and others - by wiring one the devices to the router, this will create a dedicated Sonos network for the others to connect to. Love it.