Yet another Upgrade nightmare

@Sullydks. I can sympathise with your view, but the fact is that the vast majority of users find that Sonos just works, and they don't need to be IT experts. But Sonos need to do updates, updates sometimes require reboots of speakers, that means getting new IP addresses from your router. Sonos cannot change any of that, these are facts of networking. If your router habitually screws up the assigning of IP addresses in these circumstances, there isn't much Sonos can do about that either.

So try reserving IP addresses as Ken suggested. You are in a tiny minority of Sonos users who have these sorts of errors on upgrades. So by all means continue to complain as you say you will. But there is absolutely nothing Sonos can do or needs to do at a general level to fix tis. That power lies in your hands.

Sympathy I’m not seeking. But thanks.
Using. BT smart hub. No idea which router that’s based on nowadays but it’s pretty damn common and reliable and fast. & BTW. It’s all up and running , no internet but intranet working fine. Sonos music playing.
But had to reboot every Sonos. Despite no ip clash.

Nothing anyone can say will convince me that that is an acceptable process for a standard upgrade. Or. If it is required, then we should be warned and given option to when we have a spare few hours. But then again. If I’m alone on this then so be it. Maybe it’s just my set up.


I’ve spent years promoting Sonos as an early adopter and as a faithful follower. All that changed a few years ago. When they changed.
All I’ve “complained” about has also embarrassed me, having to admit to friends that the one company I’ve waved a flag for isn’t as perfect as I’d been saying for so long.
So enough with the sympathy. How about some support to get them back to UI plug and play and “it just works” company they used to be.
Cos nowadays it doesn’t.

Moderator. Feel free to delete this whole thread.
No problem from me.

I'm not very techie either. I would say I found setting up my home computer and mobile phone far more difficult than setting up Sonos and I’m including adding IP addresses to my routers DHCP reservation table, when I say that.

It’s been a while since I did this, but to the best of my recollection. I wrote down my speakers MAC and IP addresses that are shown in the 'About my Sonos System' section in the Sonos App Settings.

I used a web browser and had to type in the address of my router, something like this https://192.168.1.1... this address revealed just a web page login screen on my router. The login details were printed on the bottom of my router and so was the https address too.

Once I was logged in, I went to the area or web-page called DHCP Reservation and it looked more or less like a table or list ... a bit like you see in excel (well not exactly, but similar).

I then selected each of my Sonos devices which were in a list shown above the table and when I clicked on them it put them into the table below. I could have saved the table once I had selected them all and that would have been job done. However I decided to change all my Sonos device IP addresses so all my devices were in sequence, a bit like this:

Sonos Lounge Play-5 (Left) 192.168.1.200
Sonos Lounge Play-5 (Right) 192.168.1.201
Sonos Kitchen Play-1 (Left) 192.168.1.202
Sonos Kitchen Play-1 (Right) 192.168.1.203
Sonos Bedroom Play-1 (Left) 192.168.1.204
Sonos Bedroom Play-1 (Right) 192.168.1.205
etc etc...

The table let me make those changes.

The only other thing that I recall in the table, was that next to each entry was the MAC address for the device, which was in 'hexadecimal' and looked something like this example... AB:30:14:BB:EC:B3

Anyhow I just used those MAC address details as a reference, so I knew which speaker was given a certain IP address... it even allowed me to give a 'friendly' name to each speaker.

Personally speaking, I found it really easy to do and I started by reading a few pages from my router pdf user-manual which I found online. It certainly was not rocket science, so to speak.

In fact the router login and linked pages which I accessed, were actually referred to in the manual as 'user configuration pages'. I also think if you make a mistake you can reset the router back to its default settings anyway, by holding a pin or pen in the reset button on the back of the router, so that also gave me the confidence to give it a go.

It really was very easy, but I’m told that the router pages do look different depending on which brand of router you are using.

I later returned to the 'About my Sonos System' area in the Sonos App Settings to see that all my devices had got the correct IP addresses that I had assigned to them.

I’ve never lost any of my speakers due to a Sonos App update, so it definitely seems it was good piece of advice from the users here.

I recommend it and it really was far easier to do, than I thought.

"It is an aggravation but setting the reserved/static IP addresses has done wonders for keeping my Sonos system stable. "

....this is why SONOS no longer has a long term future. WHY should I have to do this? I want plug and play. I do NOT want complicated configuration. And neither do 99.99% of the population.

It is indeed unfortunate that Sonos has no control over the local wifi environment.

Not to mention how frustrating it is that Sonos hasn't issued firmware updates for every brand and model of router with buggy DHCP services.

"It is an aggravation but setting the reserved/static IP addresses has done wonders for keeping my Sonos system stable. "

....this is why SONOS no longer has a long term future. WHY should I have to do this? I want plug and play. I do NOT want complicated configuration. And neither do 99.99% of the population.
So then that’s the same for Google Chomecast, Harmony Hubs, TP-Link wireless plugs and Amazon echo devices too. Those devices can also suffer the same 'fate' when they update. I have had to 'reserve' many of those devices too on my home network.

The DHCP Reservation table is no big deal ... it’s no worse than having to setup a WiFi connection on your mobile, echo dot or PlayStation etc.

It’s just a simple web-page table, like the one shown in Stanley_4’s post above.

It’s a simple list of devices that always get given the same assigned IP address on your network all the time.... it’s similar to reserving your favourite restaurant table when you go out for a meal, same type of principle.

....this is why SONOS no longer has a long term future. WHY should I have to do this? I want plug and play. I do NOT want complicated configuration. And neither do 99.99% of the population.Lucky then that 99.99% of Sonos users don't need to do any complicated configuration.

"It is an aggravation but setting the reserved/static IP addresses has done wonders for keeping my Sonos system stable. "

....this is why SONOS no longer has a long term future. WHY should I have to do this? I want plug and play. I do NOT want complicated configuration. And neither do 99.99% of the population.

As stated above, this has been the advice for dealing with wonky routers for over 10 years. So unless Sonos started not having a "long term future" 10+ years ago, a logical fallacy at best, your analysis of this situation leaves much to be desired.