I’ve seen on other forums that the beam cannot connect to 5GHz signal but my new router puts everything onto the 5GHz band and I cannot manually override that. So I created a separate IOT network on 2.4GHz, but then I can’t airplay unless my device is connected to that separate IOT network. Is there no other way to get the beam on the main network? Pretty ridiculous if that’s true in 2024. I haven’t even had my beam for 2 years and now I can’t use it for music because I upgraded my router? I just spent my entire night trying to make this work and am beyond frustrated.
Answered
Beam gen 2 connection with modern router
Best answer by Corry P
Hi
Welcome to the Sonos Community!
Sorry to hear of the issues you’ve been having with your Beam’s connectivity.
Beam has a 5GHz radio, but reserves it for talking to surround speakers and Subs. I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports - I’m confident that there will be a way of getting your Beam connected to your WiFi with some router configuration.
You mentioned that ethernet did not help - it really should have. Perhaps the cable was faulty?
I hope this helps.
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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.
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.
+17Can 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?
Hasn’t 2.4ghz and 5ghz channels been around for like years? Cannot understand why a basic two channel system cannot be supported by Sonos. Especially if an iPhone / smart phone is flicking between the two. Surely the App needs to be able to utilise both. Countless issues with Sonos that require technical abilities beyond mortal men who just want the very expensive system to to work, and would be justified in that expectation. Good luck and please do let us know how you get on if you get it working.
Hasn’t 2.4ghz and 5ghz channels been around for like years? Cannot understand why a basic two channel system cannot be supported by Sonos. Especially if an iPhone / smart phone is flicking between the two. Surely the App needs to be able to utilise both. Countless issues with Sonos that require technical abilities beyond mortal men who just want the very expensive system to to work, and would be justified in that expectation. Good luck and please do let us know how you get on if you get it working.
It has, but some of these routers are getting very complicated like this one. It has 6GHz too, the option for dedicated IoT and Guest networks etc. If they don’t propagate broadcast traffic correctly between all of that (and don’t allow you to turn off all the complicated network fairness/QoS stuff too) then things like AirPlay and Sonos really struggle. The fact that Airplay doesn’t work here to me suggests there’s something the router is doing that isn’t quite right, or one of the new fancy modes it has is causing issues. If it was just the Sonos App struggling as usual, well… I’m sure someone else would be along to happily inform you your network is the issue… 😀
Yeah. Think I know who! Keep up the unpaid labrat stuff… The only reason I keep with Sonos is that sonically they are very good when it works. When it doesn’t it’s become a drag. I hope they sort this whole mess out, work with router firms who they absolutely rely on for their coin, otherwise they are expensive Bluetooth speakers. Thanks for informing us.
+19Hi
Welcome to the Sonos Community!
Sorry to hear of the issues you’ve been having with your Beam’s connectivity.
Beam has a 5GHz radio, but reserves it for talking to surround speakers and Subs. I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports - I’m confident that there will be a way of getting your Beam connected to your WiFi with some router configuration.
You mentioned that ethernet did not help - it really should have. Perhaps the cable was faulty?
I hope this helps.
Thanks for coming back. I managed to connect it by manually putting in the pin. The software really sucks im afraid. Im quite tech savvy and your stuff appears easy but it isn’t when it doesn’t work first time.I had to hard reset twice to clear the problems. Now we have another huge issue with the app update for the macOS Sonoma..its bricked my music library. I spend more time sorting out Sonos than anyone should reasonably expect.
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