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Hello fellow members
 

I have a question regarding the Sonos boost. I have been using it for a few years as I decided to add a separate Wi-Fi network to all my Sonos speakers in the house. Since I never had a problem with signal dropouts.

Recently I added a pair of ERA 300’s as surround speakers and looking into the system settings in the Sonos app to check if the new ERA’s where connected to the separate Wi-Fi Sonos network I realised that I no longer can see in the settings if the speakers are connected to the Sonos boost by looking at the WM setting. 

My Sonos boost has been always connected directly to my router using a RJ45 and I am wondering now if Sonos have dropped this device whether or not it is worth still having this connected and if there is any benefit al all?

thanks. 
 

The Era 100/300 models DO NOT use SonosNet to connect to your system, so they are not able to connect to the Boost. When used as surrounds, they are paired to the soundbar or Amp that is used for front speakers. They transmit their own private 5Ghz WIFI for that purpose.

You can probably remove the Boost if you can get a main speaker (NOT a surround or Sub) hardwired to your network. 

Or, you can run in a ‘mixed mode’ system, where some speakers run on SonosNet, and others run on WiFi, completely transparent to you. I happen to run such a system. While I haven’t checked, I do run a BOOST, and know my Roam is on WiFi, since it has no SonosNet capability, but I often group it with many random ‘rooms’ in my system. 

Sonos’ view is that wifi is far more robust and reliable now, and hence the phase-out of SonosNet. 

The Era 100/300 models DO NOT use SonosNet to connect to your system, so they are not able to connect to the Boost. When used as surrounds, they are paired to the soundbar or Amp that is used for front speakers. They transmit their own private 5Ghz WIFI for that purpose.

You can probably remove the Boost if you can get a main speaker (NOT a surround or Sub) hardwired to your network. 

I own other Sonos speakers hence why I got the boost a while ago cos of signal drop outs and it worked. 


Knowing that the Era’s do connect directly to the Arc I was aware cos it makes sense as the Arc is the one that provides main signal to all home theatre speakers. 
 

It just takes me as a surprise that they dropped the boost regardless of what other people are saying of WiFi becoming more reliable, I was thought having a separate Sonos net made sense so no interference with other WiFi decides in the house

 

SonosNet is just an equivalent WiFi network, one that can’t be seen, but can still interfere with other WiFi channels. I think there were two actual ‘versions’, the original BRIDGE version, equivalent to 802.11b, and then the BOOST version, equivalent to 802.11g.  The reason I believe they were originally released was that a regular ‘home’ network device just couldn’t handle the number of potential connections required by up to 32 Sonos devices. That has changed over the years, and it is likely cost of maintaining these older hardware chips has moved Sonos to removing them from newer Sonos speakers. My guess is that the number of users who are still using SonosNet is fairly low, although I happen to be one. 

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