Sonos and Asus Zenwifi ET8 connection issue (solved)
Hi all,
I’ve had problems with my ASUS router/nodes for years and tried most everything (running latest firmware). My topology is Router-Wired AP and separately to another Wired AP from the router. (I have several Sonos zones with multiple variations I’ve tried AIMesh mode and the furthest node would drop regularly. The network would have hiccups regularly.
For me, the problem turned out to be broadcast storms and issues with spanning tree protocol. My version of firmware eliminated the option to turn on STP, which really didn’t matter anyway. That’s because when you SSH into the router it will tell you that STP is on. However, if you use the brctl show command, STP is clearly off. Turning it on fixed the issue mostly - it stablized the network and prevented dropping of the Sonos zone near the most problematic node.
The problem is that it is no longer possible to constituently have that command persist due to security measures in the Asus firmware. Is it dumb for Asus to have a feature that cannot survive a reboot? Absolutely. Did I put a UPS next to the router and node to hopefully protect against reboot? Absolutely. Have I asked Asus tech support about this and only gotten crickets for a reply? Absolutely.
But I decided that I wanted to really solve the problem with my network and no longer worry about this. So I bought a managed network switch (be careful to make sure it actually supports STP and that means it’ll cost $70+). My topology is now Router-Managed Switch-Access point x2. I turned STP on with the switch and changed the priority to 4096 to make sure it controlled the network.
The result is stability and performance across both the Sonos and WiFi networks. Connecting to Sonos through Spotify is now instantaneous across all zones. It just works. This was the issue for me and a quick test for you would be to SSH into your Asus nodes/router (turn SSH on in administration, open an admin terminal window, SSH -p <port> <adminusername>@<local IP address, then type in password), use the “brctl show” command to determine if STP is on or off. It will be off, because that’s just how it is with Asus routers/nodes to my knowledge. Then use the “brctl stp <bridgeport> on” command to turn it on and confirm with “brctl show” that it worked. I did this on the node and main router but probably only needed it at the node.
If you’ve tried all the other tricks without success, then give this a shot.