Advantages to Sonosnet

It Just Works. Many home routers are poorly implemented, so relying on them to deliver your Wi-Fi packets to your Sonos speakers (at the same time as all your other devices) can be problematic (see many threads here). SonosNet is trivial to set up, survives router changes without reconfiguration and is IMHO super robust.

I used a single Bridge for about 8 years in a 3600 sq ft home (with 9 Sonos devices), and with my CR100 rebate I finally got a Boost (because why not). Remains totally solid.

The Wi-Fi option should really only be used for smaller systems, I wouldn't dream of trying that on a 19-device household.

I strongly recommend SonosNet too. Here are a few further tips I found useful from the Sonos community members here...

When running on SonosNet remove your WiFi credentials in 'Advanced Settings/Wireless Setup'
Set the SonosNet channel so it is at least 5 channels away from your router 2.4ghz channel.
Keep the Boost/Speaker device, that’s cabled to the router, at least 4 feet away from the router.
Add your Sonos IP addresses to your routers DHCP Reservation Table
Fix your routers WiFi channel... do not let it auto-select channel on startup.

Don’t use access points, WiFi extenders or powerline adapters, except as a very last resort (always better to cable, wherever that’s practicable) ..and if you do, ensure they are set to the same fixed WiFi channel as the router, that’s if they are being used with Sonos. If they are NOT being used for Sonos purposes, then consider switching off the 2.4ghz WiFi band altogether and use just the 5ghz band instead (if your other non-Sonos devices support that band) and perhaps even change their broadcasting SSID, so they do not interfere with Sonos Controllers and Speakers at all.

Keep Sonos Speakers away from other wireless devices particularly microwaves, printers, IP cameras and baby monitors etc.

Continue to regularly monitor the WiFi channels in use around the home using free WiFi scanner software, such as wifiinfoview (just as an example)... always use the least-used channels for SonosNet and your own WiFi. (Still keeping them 5 channels apart from each other).

Thanks for the thoughts, all. For years I have subscribed to and delivered much of the same advice you've all given here, so I totally grok where it's coming from.

I'm just wondering if it's all still relevant. Every issue-to-be-avoided above is generally solved with modern-day Wi-Fi mesh networks. Even extenders are now far more robust and reliable than they used to be. 802.11ac backhaul changed a LOT of things, mostly for the better.

And, to address this:


All of the Sonos devices talk to the router and DHCP server, and they're all "participating" over Wi-Fi...
I'm not sure what you mean there. If SonosNet is running, Sonos devices 'participate' over SonosNet, not WiFi.

I mean that, even with SonosNet, all my Sonos devices are still participating over *some* kind of Wi-Fi, and it's a separate Wi-Fi that needs to be accounted for when setting channels for everything else. Many consumer mesh Wi-Fi products don't let you control your 2.4GHz channels, and that can really create an interference issue. And, of course, that interference is avoided if the Sonos devices are on the same Wi-Fi as everything else.

Really, I'm playing Devil's Advocate here, both for all of you and especially for myself. Like I said, I've been committed to the SonosNet-way-of-life for many years and, when I made this commitment, it was the right choice.

But now... everything around it has changed, so maybe it's not the right choice anymore?

Add to that the fact that I can't just have one Sonos device ethernetted in... I need several because of how spread out things are, and still occasionally am therefore plagued with STP-related broadcast storms, all of which I think might be avoided by just using the reliable Wi-Fi mesh I've separately created.

Remember, Sonos was the very first company to provide mesh wireless to consumers. Maybe it's time to merge it all together when the scenario warrants? Curious to hear if someone from Sonos support has some experiential thoughts to share, as mainly the rest of us are relying on anecdotal reports or old tests, myself included.

And, given that, I'll likely test this here on my network and report back. That should be ... interesting. And I hope not disastrous! 😉

Remember, Sonos was the very first company to provide mesh wireless to consumers. Maybe it's time to merge it all together when the scenario warrants? Curious to hear if someone from Sonos support has some experiential thoughts to share,
All good points, I agree as well. My 2011 router is still soldiering on gamely, and Sonosnet is my way since installation of the first Sonos hardware and the now five zone system has always performed reliably. My understanding it that whether it is WiFi or not, Sonosnet is vulnerable to the same inferences as WiFi is. But it provides a dedicated to Sonos pipe that does not suffer when there are demand spikes on the regular WiFi channels, and hence provides stable music play and turns in very high uptime performance.
But it would be interesting to know if home WiFi set ups of today, mesh or not, will allow for the same uptime as well. If so, it would also then do away one Sonosnet maintenance task - the occasional need to switch channels to avoid interference from regular WiFi. It would also be useful to know which - mesh or non mesh - of todays tech levels is better suited to Sonos.
PS: Also, does Sonos get better diagnostics for troubleshooting if Sonosnet is in use?

My question then is whenever my router does die, and if I did not want more performance from the regular WiFi than what I am getting today, does it matter to Sonos if I get a mesh or non mesh system? And for either, would Sonosnet still be the way to go for Sonos?

Note that some (most?) meshed WiFis include a secondary router which, unless it can be disabled in 'bridge mode', would split the network into multiple subnets.

Just wanted to address this in case someone less network-savvy drives by here: most mesh systems become your router, and replace your router (unless you intentionally set them up otherwise), so this scenario of multiple subnets (or double NAT) is not an issue for most folks using mesh in a default configuration.