Hi, I’m sorry to say I have very similar issues, I have spent 18 months trying to fix the issue, I have sent many hundreds of diagnostics to Sonos, last week I was told that there is nothing Sonos can do because my home doesn’t offer a pristine Environment. 
I think Sonos need to front up and say that there systems are not compatible with many other systems. 
apparently my neighbour Having a router is causing issues. 
good luck and let me know if you get a fix for this. 

Oh dear! Hope I have more luck… not sure what the best option for you is, but seems excessive to buy your own uninhabited island to get it working.

@Mcswiggen . Clearly you should not be having such problems. If you want to give more information about your setup then there are people on here who would be happy to try to help. 

For a start, it is best NOT to have a single SSID for the two WiFi bands.

What Sonos gear do you have? Is anything wired to the router?

Ignore the 'pristine environment' nonsense.  I live in an apartment and everyone in the block has a WiFi router, of course.  My Sonos has been rock-solid for nine years. (No help to you, I realise, but just to say that you should be able to achieve the same.)

It is probably best to wait for the info from the diagnostic.  But one potential cause of the symptoms you describe would be IP addressing issues.  It sometimes helps (and never harms) to reserve IP addresses in your router’s DHCP settings for all of your Sonos components.

This link may help, if you decide to look at this aspect, and have not done so already:

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Networking-and-WiFi/Superhub-3-DHCP-settings/td-p/4117502

You should definitely have separate SSIDs for the two bands.  I believe Virgin call their band steering ‘Smart WiFi’.  You should turn off Smart WiFi.

This becomes much less important if you have one of your Sonos devices wired, so I shall be interested to hear if that is the case.

God, I’m such a geek!

Hi, yes one is wired; I have tried separate names for bands & the same. I downloaded Solarwinds to try and investigate IP address issues & have ruined my Surface Pro now… really it shouldn’t be this hard; have no issues with other devices, only Sonos. I’ll review the IP addresss thing you’ve shared though; perhaps Sonos should review their system so we don’t need to though!!!

It isn’t normally this hard.  The forum is for sick systems only and is totally unrepresentative.

If you wouldn’t mind, please would you get the ip address of one of your speakers (not a Boost or Bridge if you have one) from About my System.  Then in a browser type:

http://ip address:1400/support/review

then click the Network Matrix link and post a screenshot of the matrix diagram?

e.g. it would be something like http://192.168.1.15:1400/support/review

Up to you if you want to give this a go.

(In the process, please check that all your Sonos components in About my System have WM:0 not WM:1?)

Hi John 

Thanks for replying.  Here’s the output from that URL.  A couple were showing red when i first ran it, now they all showing green.   I’m not sure what to look for to find the WM:0 and WM:1, can’t see either?

It wouldn’t let me paste the whoe report in so let me know if there’s any other bits you’d need to see?

Here also is a diagnostic report after switching on and off to get the system conneced temporarily for this:  1705573131

Network Matrix 

Moderator Note: Censored for Privacy reasons.

Hi John, i’ve sent that, but has gone into a moderator review, must be something in the network map contents triggered it; hopefully will come up soon. thanks

Here’s a PDF of the full output if that helps?

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

OK. It may be because of a security concern over Mac addresses, which I believe to be a misplaced concern. 

You might partially obscure the Mac addresses and repost if that is not too much hassle. 

Are all speakers on WM:0?

I searched, but I couldn’t see anything which said anything about WM:0 or WM:1 ? where would i find that?

In About my System, every Sonos speaker should have WM:0 or WM:1 next to it.

Ah, they don’t give that option in the iOS App anymore, found it in the Windows app though. 

They are all WM:0.  Now one is showing red on the support info though and one orange, so i’ve pasted a pic of that in below too. 

Associated Product: 192.168.*.**
---------------------------------
Play:5: Family Room
Sonos OS: S2
Version: 12.0.3 (build 58179200)
Hardware Version: 1.13.1.9-2.1
Series ID: C201
IP Address: 192.168.*.**
WM: 0
---------------------------------
Play:1: Family Room 2
Sonos OS: S2
Version: 12.0.3 (build 58179200)
Hardware Version: 1.20.1.6-2.2
Series ID: A200
IP Address: 192.168.*.**
WM: 0
---------------------------------
Play:1: Isabelle
Sonos OS: S2
Version: 12.0.3 (build 58179200)
Hardware Version: 1.8.3.7-2.0
Series ID: A101
IP Address: 192.168.*.**
WM: 0
OTP: 
---------------------------------
Playbar: Living Room
Sonos OS: S2
Version: 12.0.3 (build 58179200)
Hardware Version: 1.9.1.10-2.0
Series ID: A100
IP Address: 192.168.*.**
Audio In: Stereo 2.0
WM: 0
OTP: 

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

OK, so the Playbar is the wired device.  When you have problems, is it usually with the other speakers?  Despite the red and orange, that doesn’t seem a particularly unhealthy matrix.  Even so…..

How close is the Playbar to the router?  It should ideally be at least 3 feet away.

Do you know what 2.4GHz channel is being used by your router?  What about SonosNet?  (Check in Settings, System, Network).  They need to be at least 5 apart (e.g. wifi on 1, SonosNet on 6).  The channel width on your wifi needs to be 20MHz, not 40, and not Auto.  Edit: looks like your Sonos is currently on channel 1?

Is there any other wireless system near your Play:5, such as a Hue Bridge?  Or any electrical equipment?

You could try changing the SonosNet channel and seeing how the matrix looks.  Also, as an experiment, see what happens if you move the Play:5 a few feet.

See if any of this makes any difference to your dropout issues.

Wow, super complex, surely they can make this better.

What I think the real software issue is, is that it can’t reconnect itself. Once it’s lost connection it just gives up - whatever the effect of switching the playbar on and off is, should be what the software does - that super annoying message on the app “Help me fix it” which does nothing to help, should do it (if the software can’t auto fix before that!) - similar to the diagnose connection issue thing does on windows to reset stuff and establish connections again.

The router is prob 3 ft away, but it’s the wired device so it’s a normal Ethernet cable away, seems fairly unreasonable if it needs to be further.

The Play5 has a Bluetooth adaptor near it, feeding the line in - I can try moving, but again seems a reasonable thing to have connected to a line in.

Will have a look at the channel update suggestions too & see what can be done..

Thanks for the suggestions John & will let you know how I get on.

I really think you should reserve IP addresses too.

One effect of rebooting the Playbar would be to get another IP address. Sonos cannot do that 

99.9% of users don't need to do any of this. I can understand that it seems complex but it's really just a few router settings. 

However it goes, please post back

The many “Unable to Connect” posts draw alot of views by the looks of it, so it’s something they need to address.  I do like Sonos, had a great replacement service experience when my Sonos 5 wifi card broke, love the style & sound so when it works great… but i have a bunch of wifi connected stuff & this is the only thing which gives me any trouble. I’ve reset my network completely & taken my whole house network down to barebones, just for the Sonos, I’m on the largest UK cable broadband supplier, so likely on the same router and default config as 20% of the households in the UK - why wouldn’t it just work? 

It does just work for the vast majority of customers.  I was a Sonos reseller and installer for several years and problems like this are very rare.

Sonos makes more demands on a network than most other network connected devices. Keeping digital music synced requires constant data flows, timing cues and configuration info between multiple devices - speakers and  contollers. Getting a smart TV to connect and work is a piece of p**s by comparison. IP address issues become much more significant. 

This all has to work with hundreds of different routers, types of network,  wireless environments etc.

It's actually more surprising that it mostly works without problems than that a small minority of users have difficulties like you have.

There will be a solution to this if you stick with it.

One other troubleshooting step you should try if you haven't done so already. Use a different cable in a different router port. It is unlikely to be this... but it wouldn't be the first time.

Try the other port on the Playbar too.

All your other speakers are connecting via your Playbar, so if there were a fault your whole system would be affected. 

Maybe the cable connection isn't quite so unlikely....

I had a friend post on Facebook the other day, he’d just moved and couldn’t figure out why his new Gig Ethernet was so slow. Turned out he was using an ancient cable (CAT-3 he claimed) and as soon as he replaced it with a CAT-6, suddenly everything worked better :)

I’ve switched back to separate 2G/5G WIFI channels, restricted the available DCHP addresses, and allocated each Sonos device an IP address outside of this range.  Interestingly, apart from the Ethernet connected Playbar, none of the other Sonos speakers showed in the attached devices until after I’d manually entered the MAC addresses & allocated them an IP address. Working now, will let you know if the connections hold over the coming days. Thanks.

I hope it holds.  I’d still try a different cable if you have one!