NEVER TRY TO RUN SONOS on a vlan with UNIFI


Ok after several weeks of this I can share

Start moan.

While the idea that ALL iot devices should sit on an iot vlan SONOS resists that to its maximum.

 

The iot vlan only has one basic change over a standard LAN in this instance (was planning on tightening up further later) was that ONLY the HOME network could open connections to the IOT vlan not the other way around.

 

  1. Changing the wifi  that Sonos uses is a a REAL PAIN INTHE ASS and you have to allow up to 2 hours per SONOS device to do it. It will require following instruction that do not work, Press and Hold these two buttons until you hear a chime, after 60 seconds no chime, start all over again. Connecting to SONOS wifi - failed move closer to device - ANY CLOSER and I would be INSIDE the SONOS.
  2. These games will go  one for a few hours - with 7 devices changing the WIFi took two days!!!
  3. It should NEVER be this hard.
  4. Once completed AIRPLAY & Alexa works great between networks but SONOS stubbornly refuses to work at all for playing Music.
  5. So migrate everything back through the SONOS torture.
  6. This time it forces me to rest all devices back to Factory as the migrate back to the home LAN was repeatedly failing.
  7. As I reset each device back to Factory they connect fine but when it comes to setup they fail and forces another reset back to factory.
  8. I am resigned to spending the whole weekend resetting to factory again and again and again to get these working.

 

So not sure if the working on the vlan is a UNIFI issue or a SONOS issue - it is an issue.

BUT ALL ON SONOS for it being so incredibly hard to change wifi made 1000 times harder by the SONOS being so flakey at setup.

 

The irony here is the Echo devices made this really easy.

 

Certainly taken the shine off SONOS.

End moan.

 


This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

11 replies

Badge +20

Ubiquiti… don’t use at home unless you know what your doing and like using alpha / beta firmware. There are many posts here and on Reddit.

First off, Sonos requirements stipulate that control devices and players must share the same subnet. Operating between subnets is most definitely unsupported, though some have got it to work by careful crafting of forwarding rules. 

Switching a household (Sonos system) between subnets should be -- and is --very straightforward:

  • wire one device to the new subnet
  • power cycle everything to refresh addresses
  • if necessary, change the WiFi credentials stored in the system

Actually had Sonos, control devices and Sonos on a Mac for music library all on same sub network.

Could have worked around the Sonos working and just used the Echo and airplay which were working fine. 
 

There are deeper issues here, ironically the vlan was not the real pain.

More than happy configuring up a UniFi system.

I know how it is supposed to work, but in practice it was far from it. 
 

This time only took 4 hours, I had one Sonos one , factory reset and successfully added to only find it had disappeared off the system, requiring three more factory resets before it finally stayed on the system.

 

The instructions on Sonos to factory restore Sonos Connect are wrong and required additional research finding 5he answer on YouTube.

 

After completing 5 Sonos devices reset to factory and rejoining them, the two IKEA ones magically turned up all on their own, so it looks like IKEA got their stuff together, perhaps Sonos could ask for some technical support :-)

 

I have been able to move 50 odd iOt devices onto the vlan and all work great including audio, video devices.

 

This appears to be a very Sonos based issue.

 

The factory reset instructions at https://support.sonos.com/s/article/1096 are entirely correct for the Connect.

The IKEA speaker internals are all Sonos.

 

I still don’t understand how you managed to encounter so many problems, but I suspect that unnecessary factory resets, units hanging onto old (off-subnet) IPs, duplicated IPs, or wrangles with trying to insert new WiFi credentials could be a part of it.

It really is as simple as I set out in my earlier post. In bygone times when the /reboot URL was still available I have switched entire households, comprising many players, between subnets simply by firing /reboot URLs at all of them by script then quickly swapping the root node’s wired connection while they were mid-reboot. It literally took a couple of minutes.

Well that gives me some hope that the mess I encountered is not by design :-)

 

 

Busta999,

Factory reset is almost always a waste of time. I understand your drill, I went through this when I first setup my SONOS system and knew much less about networks than you. I was the Factory Reset ace. That was in 2005. The big lesson for me was not to waste my time with Factory Reset, concentrate on the network. A Factory Reset might accidentally fix something, such as a duplicate IP address, but it will probably not prevent the next duplicate. If you are using Ubiquiti network switches, make sure that they are set for STP, not RSTP. You can create a mess if you are using WiFi, not SonosNet and the WiFi credentials are not identical. The easiest way to fix this is to wire a SONOS unit to the network, wait a few minutes for the system to build its mesh, then correct or remove the WiFi credentials.

@buzz 

 

Thanks all good sagely advice :-)

Userlevel 7
Badge +22

I’m really happy with my Ubiquity and Sonos setup, possibly because I set the Ubiquity gear up for optimal performance with all my other non-Sonos clients and wired a Boost to move the Sonos gear to SonosNet. Ubiquity gear is happy, clients are happy and Sonos is happy.

Wired a Sonos speaker (non-sub/surround) and disconnected the Beam and all is still happy.

I’m really happy with my Ubiquity and Sonos setup, possibly because I set the Ubiquity gear up for optimal performance with all my other non-Sonos clients and wired a Boost to move the Sonos gear to SonosNet. Ubiquity gear is happy, clients are happy and Sonos is happy.

Wired a Sonos speaker (non-sub/surround) and disconnected the Beam and all is still happy.

Can you share how you setup the vlan for it all to work?

Userlevel 7
Badge +22

I’m not using a VLAN.

I simply ran an Ethernet cable to my Sonos (non-sub/surround) device and to my LAN that I have my controllers on. 

 

If you really want a Sonos only VLAN you will need to put your Controllers and any NAS on it as well as your Sonos devices. If not you’ll need to do a lot of complex networking to get all the required Sonos connections to cross from your non-VLAN controllers and NAS to your Sonos devices. Beyond my skill level or interest.

Ok

 

thank you for your contribution