Evening all. Have a large Sonos environment started maybe 13 years or so back. It’s been refreshed a time or two and continues to grow. It has in the main, been near flawless in operation. It’s all S2 and most devices not so old.

But a problem recent months has prompted some questions which I’m hoping I can get your experience and recommendation on please. 

We took the view way back that running RJ45 copper to each device was the best way to go. Every device bar an ARC with wireless One’s associated, are hard wired. 

But I’m now wondering what is the optimum networking configuration for 2025? 

Discussion today with Sonos support caused me to think that wireless seems be the preference. Or a combination of some wired and some wireless. There was less enthusiasm for wired only.

Why do I say this? We I swapped two very old and long in the tooth Netgear 48 port PoE switches out in favour of two brand new high spec managed Netgear switches. The PoE side of things had been failing for some time although the switching itself fine. Since doing this, lots of troubles! Devices dropping our, performance issues etc.

I now am led to believe that Sonos does not play well with managed switches and STP. Our new network devices perform perfectly until I add wired Sonos devices. 

I’m not upset at the issue as such, I don’t mind change or revision and indeed the very reason to make a slightly ill-informed decision on the managed switches. But I do want now to make the right networking decisions and am interested in the best practice way to go to make my long standing Sonos environment at perfect as possible and our home network likewise.

Appreciate any advice and direction to arrive at the ‘new’ best system I can