Beam gen 2 connection with modern router

Oh and to top it off, since I factory reset my beam and pair of ones as rears to try to get them to reconnect before finding out they will not connect to 5GHz, now those won’t connect to my TV because they lost connection with the beam. Very cool.

And no, ethernet does not help.

Literally 5 hours later I have settled with the second wifi network that my TV also has to be on and if I want to play music luckily spotify (not the sonos app) allows you to control music on other devices you are logged in on and connected to the internet. Airplay and the sonos app do not work unless I switch over to the other wifi network which affects airdrop between my devices and is unacceptable. All because sonos did not futureproof the beam 2 to be compatible with 5GHz internet.

Can you post what your “modern router” is? Do you also have a managed switch in your network? 

An easy way to get devices to reconnect after a router change is to configure the SSID and password the same as what you had on the old router. Then you may have just needed to restart devices to get a new IP address.

Your router can’t force a device onto 5GHz that doesn’t support it. 2.4 GHz devices will still be connected on 2.4GHz. What routers tend to do is try and hide all the different modes and just have one SSID (WiFi network name) to automatically connect devices to the best channel etc. 

When you turn that off, you can change the names for the 2.4 & 5 GHz bands so that you can ‘choose’, which sounds like you have done. So the router definitely has 2.4GHz support.  

However, even if you do that, there’s still only one IP address range normally, so things like Airplay etc. should still work. 

Does the router have any settings anywhere around IGMP or uPnP? These ideally should be on if you can find them. Also make sure you re on the latest router firmware just in case. 

I switched from a 6 year old Netgear r7000 to an Orbi 960, I performed the network switch when I set it up and lost access to airplay. Everything is updated to most recent firmware and uPnP is on, I cannot find IGMP settings. The router can place devices automatically on 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz and I have no way to manually override which devices go on which band. This feature prevents me from even connecting beam gen2 to the network through wifi or ethernet.

I created a separate 2.4 GHz IOT network last night (with same password) as many other forums have suggested, which is the only way I have been able to connect beam gen2 at all. I even disabled the 5 GHz band on the main network, rebooted the router, factory reset beam again, and still could not get beam gen2 to connect. When my sonos are on this 2.4 GHz IOT network my phone and computer cannot find them for airplay from the main network. When I merge the 2.4 GHz IOT network back into the main network the sonos app cannot find my devices, I cannot airplay, and I then have to try factory resetting and reconnecting which fails every time for beam gen2 whether it has ethernet plugged in or not.

Good grief some of these new routers are over complicated!!! 

Have you tried turning off the AX feature on the WiFi? 

sorry, my bad

On your Orbi, check under Advanced Wireless Settings, your selection for Enable 20/40MHz.

Enable 20/40 MHz coherence is checked (enabled)