Considering leaving Sonos entirely?!

If only networks worked that way. 

It’s possible for a client to detect if it’s has been handed a duplicated IP. Windows for example has done so for years. AFAIK there’s nothing that the client can then do about it unilaterally.

This IP address assignment must be done centrally using an established protocol.

Imagine the chaos if you could arbitrarily change a bank account number, perhaps to indicate your birthday, then another account holder changes their number and chooses your old number -- all this while one of your older checks is in the mail. The new owner of your old account number would be somewhat upset when your old check arrives and a lot of time would be wasted in the attempt to straighten this out.

Reserved IP addresses avoids the chaos of various network clients vying for the same address. It’s not quite good enough to ask “is anyone using this address” because the owner might be busy, sleeping or updating and will come back online a fraction of a second after the address query came back negative.

Early in networking all IP addresses were assigned manually with some rather arcane commands. This would be pure misery in the modern era when dozens of phone/pad/computers might arrive simultaneously (in a bar, restaurant, school, or stadium) and a poor network administrator would need to manually enter each device, then remove the device when the user left the premises. Now the DHCP server automatically attempts to take care of this. Address reservation for regular clients avoids misunderstandings.

A unit cannot allocate itself a new IP, the DHCP service in the router does that, and it's the router which is the problem in the first place.  If a router loses power or its allocation table is corrupted, it doesn't know the IP addresses that it previously assigned and can start handing out ones which are already in use. 

Sonos is particularly sensitive to this because all the players need to interact with the others.  Also, Sonos updates require a reboot, which means all Sonos devices get a new IP at once, exasperating an already messed up router.  Which is why people blame the Sonos updates, when it is anything but.

The ultimate fix is reserving IP addresses, so each device can only get the IP it was assigned, and no other device can get that IP.

Can’t like that post enough, @jgatie…way too much shade thrown at Sonos for something they just exercise, not control.

In my case I resisted the suggestion to reserve IP addresses. Spent a LOT of hours pouring over very detailed (pfSense) firewall logs looking for DHCP issues and found nothing. Tried a network monitor program to see even more details and was quickly swamped with data that went beyond my skill set.

My Sonos was still messing up at most power failures and updates.

Went ahead and reserved the IP addresses and have not had any similar issue since.

Do not know why it works. Don’t have proof it is needed.

But I know ten minutes clicking my router’s DHCP web page ended the issue for me.

Thewizard2000,

I don’t know your environment, but my wireless environment can be difficult. There is a medical facility next door and I can sometimes see about 70 access points. A number of access points use channels, 3, 5, and 8, with an occasional 10. The channel 5 system uses 40MHz channel width. It’s difficult to deal with this level of congestion. There can be periods of erratic PING. times.

Overall, I think that SONOS copes well with this environment.

For those users who report that their phone/pad always works, therefore their WiFi is “perfect”, I’m rather sensitive to response times and it is obvious to me that the wireless phone/pad is struggling at times, but not at the point of ‘fail’. I don’t attempt to precisely log each potential event. With respect to external Internet connectivity there is always the potential for rare transient issues there.

With respect to my phone’s 5GHz connection to the gateway, the average latency is reasonable in the 3-5ms range, but there are occasional spikes to the 90ms range and I have observed singular, much longer PINGs. I cannot prove that these events are actual communications failures or some sort of lag in the reporting device. (It’s simply a logging App)

Back in 2005 I had major issues with my SONOS system. Most of these resolved after I reserved IP addresses. … Then there was the neighbor’s 2.4GHz phone system to work around.

@jgatie

Hello jgatie i finaly tried as you said to put a ip reservation (static) to all my 6 devices and it solved the unsync issue for my spotify and my regular music contain. Thank you!

However i still experiment the unsync issue 5 seconds at the begining of each track with hi-resolution (hifi) music like tidal. Less than before since its only 5 seconds instead of 10-15 seconds…

Do you have any clue for this?

Thanks again!

@buzz

I do not live close to hospitals or any crowed place. I live in an almost rural place and there is not much nearby except a few neighbors.

If you can, connect one of your Sonos to the main hub of the Orbi via an Ethernet cable.  Wait a few, then try the HD tracks.

This is the first time in 2 years that my system is going so well. I'm afraid to touch something.You rock 😍 Hope it will last. However, I will try tonight. I imagine that this will not disturb my ip addresses again?