My questions:
- What decides whether surround bonding uses 2.4G vs. 5G?
- Is there any way to control or force to one direction?
- Are there any other options I have here other than hardwiring all my devices in rooms that have surround bonding?
Full context:
I’ve been chasing some wireless issues on my home network in my 2.4GHz channel space, I previously had my living room Arc hardwired to my home network, and that was making a SonosNet network for the rest of the home. Two days ago I unplugged that Arc from my home network, and then all my devices went from WM:0 to WM:1, and everything seemed to work really nice, and the other non-Sonos devices on my 2.4GHz wireless network that were having issues, started working much better.
One of my rooms has a Beam 2 with a pair of One SLs as surrounds. I decided to add a Sub Mini to that room, and now one of the non-Sonos devices that was having 2.4G issues is having issues again. After Googling, I see online that surround bonding typically uses 5GHz, and that seems to be the case in my living room (Arc + pair of Era 300’s as surrounds + Gen. 2 Sub), bur my guest bedroom (Ray + pair of One SL’s surrounds) seems to use 2.4, and the master bedroom (Beam 2 + One SL surrounds + Sub Mini) seems to be using 2.4. Whenever the non-Sonos devices go offline, if I’m playing music in this room, the surround speakers and subs have dropouts.
I’m curious why the Arc uses 5GHz for surround bonding, but the Beam 2 & Ray are using 2.4. (I’m verifying this by using the /support/review page on one of my devices, and looking at the /proc/ath_rincon/status page for the devices in question).
Of the 3 rooms that have surround bonding, I could possibly hardwire all the devices in one of the rooms, but the other 2 it would be a big production to do that, I’m sure hardwiring everything and disabling Wi-Fi on those devices would probably be the best answer/solution here, but that’s going to be costly, and I’m trying to make sure my home security devices can reliably stay on WiFi, which it seems after adding the Sub Mini to the master bedroom, now has issues again.
Thanks in advance!