setup sonos in a campus LAN

  • 5 May 2023
  • 4 replies
  • 124 views

Hello,

I'm the network admin in a large geographical campus LAN. We have may different buildings and all our buildings are connected with our own dark fiber via layer 2 and 3 switches.

I need to setup a Sonos amp and two Sonos outdoor speakers. My two questions are:

1. At the new site I plan on installing the amp and speakers. I will connect the amp to the network switch which is connected to a layer 3 firewall, (Cisco Meraki MX), to the Internet. I will setup a new private network on the firewall for Sonos,  (SSID on Cisco Meraki MX), that only employees can access the SSID. The Sonos equipment will connect to the Sonos SSID and employees with the Sonos app can login and access. Does this sound technically correct?

2. If more sites want to add Sonos equipment across the campus LAN, is there a way or a better solution where there would be a "main" Sonos site and different Sonos equipment across the LAN where everything in Sonos can be controlled out would I just setup each site with it's own Sonos network and it's managed individually per site?

Thank you.

 

 


4 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +22

If I understand your proposal what you are proposing should work. Sonos is intended to work on a single LAN segment and folks have used it on fancy networks by adding a travel router to provide that LAN.

If you have other Sonos on other LAN segments they should not see each other, Maybe you could configure your network to bridge the two segments but that is way beyond my skill level. I do think it has been discussed here so you could search for it. The on-forum search is weak so using a full search engine with the “site:” option is often more productive.

You could set up a centralized Music Library using a protocol that will pass on your network. Then on each LAN segment use a gateway server to link to that source and provide it as an SMB share on the local LAN.

Hi Stanley, thanks very much for your response. So this is a simple diagram of how I plan to set it up.

SIte #1 will have the WIFI and Sonos equipment, (2 Outdoor speakers and AMP) and the Sonos AMP will be plugged into a layer 2 switch which is directly connected to a layer 3 switch in Site #2. That layer 3 switch is connected to a Cisco Meraki MX firewall which I can create the private LAN segment for the SONOS WIFI Network - which goes out to the internet.

There’s a 1 mile distance between the buildings on a private fiberthat connects both buildings across the LAN.

Thoughts?

 

BTW, I’m not sure what you meant by “travel router” - but I’m assuming you meant something to create the seperate network for the SONOS devices? That what I’m using the MX firewall for,

Userlevel 7
Badge +22

Since the two Sonos locations are on different LAN segments (separated by the firewall) you would have two different Sonos systems that wouldn’t connect to each other.

You would need a way for the Sonos Controller to connect to the LAN that the Sonos system is connected to, wired or wireless, to control the two different systems..

 

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