Contributor I

Sky Max Hub, Orbi 7 mesh & Sonos discovery issues??

Forum|Forum|3 months ago
July 4, 2026
24 replies
370 views

Help from the pro’s needed...🙏

11 Speaker Sonos System - Becomes Unresponsive After a While (Sky Max + Orbi RBE871 AP Mode)

I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction because I’m running out of ideas.

My client has an 11-speaker Sonos system consisting of:

Beam
Sonos Amps
Play:3s
Sonos Ones
Roam

For over 6 months they’ve experienced intermittent issues including:

Rooms disappearing
“Unable to connect”
“Cannot communicate”
App timing out
Speakers appearing in the app but with no playback controls
Alexa playing to the wrong room or saying it’s playing when nothing happens

Original Network

I discovered the network was configured like this:

Sky Max Hub (routing + Wi-Fi enabled)
Orbi RBE871 mesh (Router Mode + Wi-Fi enabled)

So there were effectively two routers and two Wi-Fi systems.

Changes Made

I spent the day simplifying everything:

Sky Max Hub now does all routing and DHCP.
Sky Wi-Fi disabled.
Orbi RBE871 changed to AP Mode.
Garden Orbi also changed to AP Mode.
Garden Sonos speaker moved into the same Sonos household as the rest of the house.
Reserved almost every Sonos IP on the Sky router except Beam that would not reserve IP?)

General Internet performance is excellent and all devices receive correct 192.168.0.x addresses.

Behaviour

Initially everything appeared much better.

However, after a short while (or after leaving the house and returning), some or most speakers become unresponsive.

The strange thing is:

All speakers still appear under Settings > About My System.
Music services are still visible.
Playback controls disappear.
Trying to start new music often fails with “Unable to connect” or similar.

Interestingly:

Previously playing speakers often continue playing.
Sometimes pressing the Play button on the physical speaker starts playback, even though the app cannot control it.
If I go into the Devices screen at the bottom of the app, the speakers that were already playing often still respond.
It seems to be starting new playback or controlling speakers that fails.

One particularly odd observation was that during one failure, the only speaker that responded was actually the one with the weakest Wi-Fi signal.

Sonos Support

I spent around two hours on the phone with Sonos Support.

They looked at diagnostics and suggested changing the Orbi 2.4GHz channel from 1 to 6 due to network congestion.

Immediately afterwards every speaker appeared to work.

I ended the call, walked outside to the van for a few minutes, returned to demonstrate everything was working… and almost the entire system had stopped responding again.

The behaviour was identical on both my phone and the client’s phone, so it doesn’t appear to be controller-specific.

Current Thoughts

At this point I’m wondering whether this could be related to:

SSDP/mDNS discovery
Multicast handling
Sky Max Hub behaviour
IPv6
Orbi AP Mode
Or something else entirely

General Internet access remains stable throughout.

I should also mention that before changing the network topology, the client’s main complaint was that when he walked between rooms, the Sonos app often took a long time to reconnect or would lose communication with the speakers.

One thing that keeps standing out is that every time I reboot the network, or make a network change, the Sonos system appears to work properly again for a while before gradually becoming unresponsive.

Has anyone experienced similar issues with Sky Max Hub + Orbi RBE871 in AP Mode + Sonos?

Before I return next week I’m compiling a checklist of things to try, including:

Wiring one Sonos player as a test.
Disabling IPv6.
Checking WPA2/WPA3 security settings.
Looking into multicast/IGMP settings.

Any advice or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Pinned Reply By homeconnected

I know this has been a while since raising this post but thought Id update you on what happened,

I was in talks with SONOS support who looked in the backend and found the Sonos devices bouncing between Orbi sats hundreds of times causing the devices to drop out etc.

Various changes were made to the system settings and device isolation ie turning everything we could off like Sky, Amazon, Ring, WIFI appliances etc, nothing worked, in fact it seemed to make it worse!?

also a lot of neighbouring congestion seemed to be present on all channel numbers etc.

Still nothing improved, Having offered a No fix No fee after my first charge of network changes that included getting rid of double NAT, reserving IPs etc I was as keen as he to get it sorted.

I Had nothing left to try so quoted the client for a wired Omada system which he agreed to, I ordered the special order items, in between this he messaged to say he put back the old Orbi system, disconnected the Orbi 07 and everything is perfect! Also cancelling the special order items I had ordered!

and he hasnt been in touch since, thats was 2 weeks ago.

So, any Installers or people looking to upgrade their WIFI system watch out for the Orbi RBE871, not sure if they were faulty or all the same but they sure cost me a lot of time and money!

thanks for all your suggestions and support

Show previous replies

C

craigski

Local Superstar

When nothing else is working keep reserved IP address assignment as something to try. It is a fairly quick and easy process, fully reversible with even less effort. Faster than most calls to support.

OP already reserved IP addresses, which didn’t resolve issue. This is why I suggest there is no need to reserve.

There are 5M+ Sky broadband customers in UK, there is no requirement to reserve IP addresses on a Sky router for Sonos.

I would bet if the Orbi was turned off, and the Sky router WiFi used instead, there would be no issues for the devices in range of the Sky router WiFi.

Symptoms suggest issue is Orbi, and how it is handling the multicast network traffic from the controller (phone) and Sonos devices when clients are using different bands. Hence why I suggested disabling 6GHz band before disabling IPv6.

FWIW, Sky UK was one of the first UK ISP to rollout IPv6 (10+ years ago), so should have a more mature IPv6 network infrastructure than other ISPs.

homeconnectedAuthor

Contributor I

I would try disabling 6GHz radio’s on Orbi for client connections, if that's possible

If you change the security protocol to WPA2 (is probably default “WPA2/WPA3” Transitional Mode) this will disable 6GHz client connections, as 6GHz band requires WP3.

Another thought, is when the phone controller is having issues with transport buttons etc, open a web browser on a laptop and go to play.sonos.com (IPv4 only), and check if the Web App can see all Sonos devices and control them.

play.sonos.com, good idea to try as a separate controller, can test when the phone is an issue, Also going to capture traffic when fault arises using Wireshark, once captured, my first change will be to disable 6Ghz on Orbi, However I remember the client telling me he had issues before he brought the latest Orbis, the previous Orbis would not have been 6GHz, although it could have been a different issue at the time as it was around 6 months ago.

homeconnectedAuthor

Contributor I

Quick update after another day of testing.

I spent several hours on site today and was able to reproduce the issue again.

The pattern seems fairly consistent:

The system can work normally for quite some time.
After the Sonos app has been used for a while (switching between different speakers, grouping/ungrouping, changing music sources etc.), the app gradually becomes unreliable.
Eventually individual rooms start showing “Unable to connect”, although all rooms remain visible in the app.
The affected room isn’t always the same one.

Some observations from today’s testing:

The speakers continue playing if they’re already playing.
All Sonos products remain visible in the iPhone app.
The Sonos web app (play.sonos.com) on a MacBook continues to work even while the iPhone app reports “Unable to connect”.
I captured traffic with Wireshark while the fault was present. The speakers continued advertising themselves via mDNS/SSDP and responded to HTTP requests, suggesting they were still on the network.
I also continuously pinged speakers during testing and didn’t see any packet loss or the speakers dropping off the network.

The customer has also noticed that the issue tends to occur after they’ve been at home and using the system for a while. For example, after finishing work and sitting down to play music, they found that the Dining Room speaker wouldn’t respond in the app, despite remaining visible.

The system is:

Orbi RBE871 (router with wireless satellites)
Sky Max broadband (Sky Stream Pucks in the Living Room and Dining Room)
Sonos S2
iPhones used as controllers

As another test, I disabled Wi-Fi 6E Mode on the iPhone (forcing it to use 5 GHz instead of 6 GHz). Initially the app appeared more responsive, but after further testing the issue returned, so at this stage I can’t conclude whether that setting has any effect.

At this point I’m still trying to determine whether this is related to:

the Sonos iOS app,
Orbi networking,
Sky equipment,
or some interaction between them.

Has anyone experienced a similar situation where:

all rooms remain visible,
play.sonos.com continues to control the system,
but the iPhone app intermittently reports “Unable to connect” after the system has been in use for some time?

kdowling

Do you have this problem if using an S2 controller on an android device? How about an S2 desktop controller. Third party apps? Anything other than an iPhone S2 controller.

Airgetlam

With an issue only with the iOS controller, that suggests something going on with the iOS device contacting the router improperly, in some way. What did Sonos Support say, when you called them to discuss it?

While I might infer an issue with the iOS controller, the fact that I’ve not experienced any with the three separate devices, that are iOS based, suggest otherwise. Which is why I’m suggesting the hard data regarding the connection that Sonos can see, and we in the public can’t, may be useful.

If I were to guess, the iPhone(s) are switching network connections to alternate devices. Which then blocks the connection to the Sonos speakers. But as I say, that’s merely a guess.

Bruce

kdowling

When this happens, close the iOS S2 controller (swipe up and then push off the top of the screen). Then start the app again. Does it now connect to the previous “Unable to connect” device?

homeconnectedAuthor

Contributor I

When this happens, close the iOS S2 controller (swipe up and then push off the top of the screen). Then start the app again. Does it now connect to the previous “Unable to connect” device?

quitting and restarting the app will show the same screen but with no content, functions still unavalable for that chosen speaker, continuing to operate the apps functions will eventually render it unusable until left for an amount of time

kdowling

Just trying to narrow it down. iPhone? iPhone S2 controller? Network? There’s just not enough info to go on. And since we don’t have access to any diagnostic information, it’s all just guessing. Did you test any other devices besides an iPhone?

I think your best option is to contact Sonos support again and try to escalate to higher level support. Unless a network expert pops in and says ‘yes, I seen this before. You need to check this option on your access points/router”, I don’t know what else can be done.

Airgetlam

No content is a result of the controller not being able to reach the ‘system’, which runs in the speakers, to get any information. Remember, the controller is only a window on to the system that runs on the Sonos devices themselves. It isn’t really part of the Sonos system itself, it does nothing other than show what is occurring on the system, and send commands to that system. It doesn’t ‘play’ anything itself, at the controller level…which is why we call it a controller ;). Think of it as the remote for your TV set. It doesn’t really do anything but send commands to the TV. In this case, it also reports what is happening on the system (note, I’m using the word system, rather than speakers, since that includes non-speaker Sonos devices such as the Port and Amp).

Bruce

AjTrek1

I’ll supply this information about my setup..who knows it may be of interest. I don’t think the app is at fault. IMO there’s something with the network configuration.

ASUS AiMesh WiFi 7