Playbase and BT smarthub 2

Change the name of the 5Ghz channel to force all Sonos devices to use 2.4ghz. 
ensure the 2.4ghz wifi is running on one of channels 1, 6 or 11. 
also consider allocating fixed ip addresses for your Sonos devices. 

As you probably can’t put that BT router in the trash, which is where it belongs, disable as much of it as you can (put it in Bridge mode if permitted), then get a proper router and use its wifi instead.

I’m not a huge fan of ISP provided routers, either. Most of them have been chosen, it seems, by bean counters for least cost, and not for quality of operation. 

I’ve just determined my new T-Mobile 5G ‘router’ device doesn’t allow IP reservations, one of my tasks for this weekend is to rummage through moving boxes to find my older Netgear router, which is more functional, or figure out if it’s time to purchase a newer model with WiFi 6 or 7. 

If you can disable the T-Mobile router’s DHCP server you can plug any chosen repurposed router into the LAN as a replacement DHCP. The older Netgear may be able to run FreshTomato, whose dnsmasq server is able to cope with at least 100 IP reservations. 

I’ll need to poke around in the T-Mobile software to see what control I have. 

They keep promising me that they’ll get fiber on this street…in two or three years. No cable available, and not enough open sky for StarLink or other satellite services. The closest I can get to broadband is this 5G stuff. Fortunately, it’s solid enough to support TV streaming, so it’s not all bad. Maybe moving to a remote island in Washington wasn’t the smartest thing for me, connectivity wise ;)

I don’t understand why you think this will make a difference. The devices on the 5GHz network work without issue. When the Playbase is on the 2.4 channel it works and they all work together. The problem is the Playbase drops off the network.  FYI: The BT mesh network does not support different SSIDs for the 2.4 and 5 GHz.

Hi Ratty, interesting that BT Whole Home mesh doesn’t forward SSDP discover packets reliably between bands.that said the system worked very reliably with the mesh before I had the change the router. Would changing the router cause this to be an issue?

If the router isn’t passing data effectively between the 2.4 and 5.0 frequencies there will be comms issues between any Sonos devices running on the different frequencies. Playbase is 2.4 only so force your other speakers to also use this frequency. 

Assuming you have the older Whole Home mesh discs they should be independent of the router. If they’re the Complete WiFi discs they cooperate with a Smart Hub 2.

If the SSID of the discs was set to be the same as the old router and the new router’s is different then speaker connectivity could have changed. 

They are the older disks, but the SSID is not the same as the router.

A long discussion with BT, they agreed it is their issue, but their tech staff have no more ability to configure the device than I have.  Their proposed solution, replace my new router with the model I had before as I don’t need Digital Voice.