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I have LOTS of Sonos speakers.  I’m in a 18’ wide, 4-story (including the basement) detached house in NYC.  It’s not a big house.  There are speakers in both rooms on the 3rd floor, 2 out of 3 rooms on the 2nd floor, all 3 rooms on the first floor and the basement.  The way I figured it, the Sonos mesh network would work very well in these circumstances, but I have not found it to be solidly reliable, especially when playing in multiple rooms. Some days it works pretty well, but some days (like last night) I can’t seem to get it to play a single song without drop-outs and failures.

I do have older Sonos units (Play 5, Play 3, Sub) and I wonder how good the Sonos mesh network actually is.  I have a TP-Link Deco (older M3 model) mesh Wifi router with 2 extenders (1 on each floor).  It’s a dense area, but not like an apartment building.

Other than running Ethernet throughout the house, what is my best course of action?  Am I stuck just hoping the wifi will work well today?  Are there tests I can do?

I love the Sonos, but it frustrates me sometimes...and it drives my wife batsh*t.

Hi @JackInBrooklyn 

I don’t know if your home is one of the older brownstone buildings with thick walls and reinforced ceilings but if so that may be the cause of your issue. 

Also, you mentioned the SonosNet and a TP-Link Deco mesh router with 2 nodes. If you are relying strictly on your TP-Link mesh know that Sonos does not always play well with wi-fi mesh networks. To effectively integrate Sonos you need to wire a speaker to the made node. Ideally, I recommend using a Sonos Boost as the wired product as it has better antennae than the speakers you have to create the Sonos mesh.   

Follow the instruction in this link to switch from wireless to wired Sonos.

Note: If your walls and ceilings are thick there’s no guarantee that creating the Sonos mesh as suggested will completely resolve your issues.

Cheers!

Thanks, @AjTrek1!

 

I should have mentioned that the two speakers in my office (3rd floor) are a stereo pair wired directly to the router.

 

The house is not a brownstone. It’s a house built in 1930. I don’t think we have thick ceilings or walls.

 

John

JackInBrooklyn,

Go to http://[adress of a player]:1400/support/review and click on “Network Matrix” at the bottom. Red cells indicate units that are struggling with SonosNet. Note that this is a static view, refresh the page in order to update the display. You may notice interference varies by time of day.

Experiment with using different wireless channels.

I’m in a wireless pit of intermittent interference. All of my cells in the left column can be red and sometimes (rare) they’ll be green. Moving units a few inches can sometimes be helpful when there is a nearby interfering device. 

Tonight I have mostly yellow and orange with a few green as shown below.  One thing I notice is that the Office(L) connects to the Living Room (L).  They are two floors apart.  The Bathroom and the Master Bedroom are both between the Office and the LR, but the system uses the longer distance connection here.

Are there tools one can use to measure WiFi signals / interference that are not too expensive?  It’s difficult to solve this since I feel like it’s all trial and error.

 

*Moderator Note: Please censor personal information when posting pictures.*

There are some free Apps for phone/pad that offer some help. These are not top quality tools, but they can at least identify crowded areas and give an indication of signal strength. Access points that suppress SSID will be invisible, of course.

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