Tests For New Mesh Router

First, thanks to all for the help so far.  I appreciate your efforts.

My TP-Deco mesh router selects the best channel on its own and it is not manually configurable.  I know….that’s a drag.

I have not connected the Eero, yet...wanted to wait to see what you all had to say about that first.

The WiFi analyzer app on my phone shows the TP-Deco mesh router is using channel 4.  Sonos Net is on channel 1.  That does not seem to show up on my WiFi Analyzer app, as far as I can tell.

There are weak signals on channel 1, 6, & 11.  I presume they are from my neighbors.  I live in Brooklyn in a narrow (18’) detached house that is about 3’ from each of my neighbor’s  homes.

@Xander P , how can you tell there are a flood of data on the Office (R)?

The Office(R) & Office (L) speakers are wired to the router through a Netgear switch as my router has only 1 RJ45 port.

Should I disconnect the Office(R) and run it?  Should I submit more diags after doing that?

Thanks,

John

Hi @JackInBrooklyn, in the diagnostics we can check the Transmission Queue of players, and on the Office (R) speaker, the queue is being flooded with more data than it can send. 

Disconnecting the Office (R) speaker would be a good place to start, however the issue may just jump over to the Office (L) speaker if it’s the only wired unit - lets give it a try, and if you can send a further diagnostic after that would be great.

If the issue does just jump over, we may need to look in to the settings of the switch - is it a managed, or unmanaged switch? Do you have the model number of the switch available?

@Xander P  - Sorry for the slow response.

I disconnected the Ethernet cable from Office (R) while streaming SiriusXM in the K, DR, & LR.

I ran diagnostics.  387228641.

I was upstairs, but I thought I heard the radio drop out for a bit, so I ran diagnostics again.  51776024

The switch is unmanaged.  It’s a Netgear ProSafe 8 port gigabit switch model  GS108.

As a note, I did switch over to the Eero mesh network for the home network.  I am getting MUCH higher speedtest results all over the house.  I noticed it has selected channel 1, so I switch the SonosNet to channel 11, which seems to be less crowded signal-wise.

Let me know what you think.

Thank you again,

John

Some versions of Netgear GS108 are incompatible with Sonos:

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/41?language=en_US

Nice catch, @Clausn. My switch is a v3, which is not on the incompatible list.

@Xander PJust for fun, I configured Sonos to use the Eero mesh WiFi. 

Here is a diag from when it was set up that way, in case that is helpful: 788605658

I don’t think I am going to keep the Eero because it does not allow me to configure the local IP addresses nor does it allow for channel selection.  But trying it has shown me that my TP-LINK Deco is not performing very well.  If I am using SonosNet, I guess that doesn’t really matter to the Sonos.

I still don’t get why the SonosNet doesn’t create a very robust network when I have a speaker in just about every room in the house.  It’s never far from one speaker to another.

Since SonosNet is just another radio signal, it has all the same potential issues as a ‘normal’ WiFi signal, including the issues described in the wifi interference FAQ. It isn’t a magic bullet. As a random guess, it could be clashing with your own WiFi signal, if they’re both using the same channel. Or, for that matter, as has happened to me, my neighbor’s new router stomped all over the channel I had been using until they moved in, I had to adjust my SonosNet channel. 

Thanks, @Airgetlam .  That makes total sense.  What I do not completely  understand is why the new Eero mesh wifi router with its 2 satellite units (one on each floor of my narrow, 3-story house) gives great speedtest results all around the housebut the SonosNet does not create a robust mesh network with LOTS more speakers to serve as nodes in the mesh network.

Because in order for the Eero to work the way they designed it to, it breaks your network into separate ‘segments’, or subnets, all with the same SSID and password. Since Sonos was designed to be on a single subnet, the speakers are unable to ‘reach’ each other across multiple subnets, and as a result, fail to connect. 

I’m slightly oversimplifying things, I suspect, but that’s the gist of the issue. Euro was designed for device to internet connections, Sonos was designed for device to device, to controller, to internet. Eero doesn’t support that kind of ‘mesh’ connections. 

Speedtest measures the speed from your device to the Eero, to the internet. It doesn’t measure the connection speed in between nodes in your local system, such as Sonos uses. It’s a great measure of how fast your system reaches an outside server, but a poor measure of how one device on the network connects to another device on the network.

Your current setup, with each speaker plugged in to a separate puck on a separate subnet,  sets up the Sonos to fail, since they are blocked from seeing each other. If you remove all but one speaker’s cable, and leave that one connected to the base eero unit, it will force your Sonos system to work off of SonosNet, the original mesh network Sonos came up with all those years ago.