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Two Locations, Two Systems, One Account S2, no longer switching households.

  • September 8, 2020
  • 6 replies
  • 734 views
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Hello:

For the past year or so, I have had two Sonos systems between two locations.  Whenever I switched locations, the Sonos controller app would dutifully switch systems.  I updated both systems to the S2 controller, and everything still functioned properly.  However, recently (mid-august) I have had to reset the controller on my phone (Android based) to get the software to recognize that I have switched locations.  I have verified that I can control the other system remotely using my home security systems when the controller software is “confused” about it’s location.  This would seem to be an issue recently introduced by a S2 software update.  I do have these two locations VPN’d together, but this has always been the case, and predates either Sonos installation.  Something has changed with the controller software that seems to allow it to leverage this VPN connection.

Best answer by scottresnik

Just to add another case that seems to point to the S2 app as the culprit.  I was at a friend’s house this past weekend, and wanted to operate as a guest with his Sonos system.  My app just showed blank, grey boxes for each one of my Sonos units.  I had to reset the app to get the local Sonos system to show up.  Once i did, it worked fine.  When I returned to my home, the same thing happened.  Gray boxes for the friend’s Sonos system, until I reset the app.

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    6 replies

    ratty
    • ratty
    • 31402 replies
    • September 8, 2020

    Maybe the controller wasn’t closed before being reopened at the second location. If it was still running it might have retained the IPs of the first household, which it could then see via the VPN.

    A VPN typically won’t pass the controller’s discovery multicasts/broadcasts, so on reopening at location 2 the controller should just have discovered the local household.

    (As an aside, running two households on the same subnet using the same controller -- both discoverable -- is a troublesome way to proceed. It’s pot luck which household the controller will pick when it opens.)

    Airgetlam
    1 person likes this
    • Airgetlam
      Airgetlam
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    • scottresnik
    • Author
    • Contributor I
    • 6 replies
    • September 8, 2020

    They’re on separate subnets that are routed between one another.  I’ve never had to close or do anything to the app to get it to recognize the correct location.  Just like when I’m out of wifi range, the app tells me so, and once back in range, it reports the correct sonos system, or none at all if it’s not my network.  Until recently where it defaults to the last used.  Apparently the app is now not switching systems if there is a route to the last used system.

    ratty
    • ratty
    • 31402 replies
    • September 8, 2020

    By default a Sonos controller will only discover players on its local subnet. However, as I intimated, a sleeping controller can cache player IPs and, if they remain reachable, continue to access them from a different subnet when it’s re-awoken.

    If a controller has been fully exited and restarted I don’t know of any way it could continue to access a household on a different subnet, unless specific forwarding rules had been set up between the subnets.

    H
    • hans.f
    • Lyricist I
    • 2 replies
    • September 8, 2020

    Hi. 
    I have exactly the same problem as scottresnic. Two systems in separate locations, different subnets on a vpn, no specific forwarding rules set up. Sonos app switched automatically between locations until this August. Now I have to reset the S2 app to get it to switch. 

    S
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    • S
      scottresnik
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    • scottresnik
    • Author
    • Contributor I
    • 6 replies
    • Answer
    • September 14, 2020

    Just to add another case that seems to point to the S2 app as the culprit.  I was at a friend’s house this past weekend, and wanted to operate as a guest with his Sonos system.  My app just showed blank, grey boxes for each one of my Sonos units.  I had to reset the app to get the local Sonos system to show up.  Once i did, it worked fine.  When I returned to my home, the same thing happened.  Gray boxes for the friend’s Sonos system, until I reset the app.

    H
    1 person likes this
    • H
      hans.f
    H
    • hans.f
    • Lyricist I
    • 2 replies
    • September 21, 2020

    I switched locations today for the first time since upgrading to iOS 14.0. This time the Sonos app (12.0.6) correctly switched and connected to the local system.  I will be keeping my fingers crossed that the upgrade has solved the problem permanently. 

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