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era 100. wifi

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I e got a playbar and two s1 speakers about 10 years old. They work ok. I recently added an era 100 that drops out intermittently. When it is working, The status on the app shows its wifi is not connected though. How can it be made to work full time? Nits on channel 44 the others are on channel 1.

v annoying

Sonos Era 100

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Ken_GriffithsAnswer

Your router outputs a WiFi signal over two separate bands. The 5Ghz WiFi band which is faster and has less penetration through walls etc. and the 2.4Ghz band which is slower, but far more reaching/penetrating.

At the moment your Era 100 is using the 5Ghz band and your other products are using the 2.4Ghz band - the obvious thing to try is what I suggested earlier, which is to put the Era speaker onto the 2.4Ghz band. Sadly it seems you’re not confident to do that, via the router configuration pages and don’t wish to read the router user guide - so I can only suggest you get someone into to do that for you and see if it then works.

Only if not, it just perhaps becomes a case of nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Edit: I don’t think you need a new modem/router, but that’s a matter for you.

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Ken_Griffiths

Yes the reason I paid big $ for Sonos is to avoid having to pay someone to plug it in. I hoped that being a so called state of the art that it would be user friendly… but adding a speaker has destroyed the whole thing .

Yes, I guess the same can be said for my car and central heating boiler too - I can do a few things myself, but there are times when I prefer to pay someone else to do it, like annual servicing etc. I don’t think it’s your speaker that needs attention here anyway, but more likely your local network setup, but that’s just my guess at this point in time.

There is, as you know, a fundamental difference between the way that the car and central heating boiler is marketed when compared to Sonos.

When I purchase a car, the service requirements are clearly stated in the handbook so I know what the requirements are and can factor in the cost to my decision. Same with the boiler the manufacturer tells you what is needed so the cost can be understood.

Sonos is sold as a plug and play system suitable for the consumer to install and manage themselves. Before 7th May 2024 that was true for me but it now seems that we need to factor in additional costs or become “experts” for ourselves.

The user should not be blamed for expecting it to “just work” the problem belongs to Sonos and needs to be addressed by their marketing, who could explain the complexity before we buy, or their technical people getting the system to work like it used to i.e. without expert interference.

I’m sorry, but I don’t see changing a router setting as requiring any ‘expertise’, personally speaking, as it’s settings and how the user can change them, is in every user guide that I’ve ever encountered. It’s certainly no more difficult than setting up a TV, or making changes to some boiler settings or topping up the oil in a car engine - the issue here is not about making a change to Sonos anyway, it’s about changing a router setting and if anyone is not confident to do that …and is not prepared to read the user guide, then they need to find a friend who can do it for them, or pay someone to do it, in the same way I pay for my car and boiler service. There are no changes that need changing on the Sonos side of things here.

Ken_Griffiths

@Gaham

As another analogy when my new TV landed here a few years ago I set it up initially with its default settings, most of which were extreme power saving and with no internet connection etc. I had to read it’s user manual to get it working on WiFi (and later on a wired connection with a static IP address) and changed a few settings to improve its display and to get it working with Alexa - so out the box it did work fine, but there were certainly changes needed to get things working in a more optimal way. A router and other plug-in’play devices are no different and to sometimes get everything working together optimally, it may mean that some configuration changes will assist… it’s why the manufacturers of such devices give their users access to such settings.

G

Gaham

Headliner I

@Gaham

As another analogy when my new TV landed here a few years ago I set it up initially with its default settings, most of which were extreme power saving and with no internet connection etc. I had to read it’s user manual to get it working on WiFi (and later on a wired connection with a static IP address) and changed a few settings to improve its display and to get it working with Alexa - so out the box it did work fine, but there were certainly changes needed to get things working in a more optimal way. A router and other plug-in’play devices are no different and to sometimes get everything working together optimally, it may mean that some configuration changes will assist… it’s why the manufacturers of such devices give their users access to such settings.

Yesterday I would have loved it if I could have said about Sonos “out of the box it did work fine” like your TV. It did not yet today it is fine 🙅🏽

If Sonos want us to use static IP addresses then we should be able to configure an address for the speakers. I use static IP addresses for devices that support this and allow me to specify in the devices settings the IP address that I want to use. The current approach of “reserving” the address on the router for Sonos is not a real solution to static IP addressing.

jgatie

UPnP requires DHCP, which is why reserving IP addresses was the only way to configure Sonos to keep the same address.

Ken_Griffiths

Yesterday I would have loved it if I could have said about Sonos “out of the box it did work fine” like your TV. It did not yet today it is fine 🙅🏽

If Sonos want us to use static IP addresses then we should be able to configure an address for thspeakers. I use static IP addresses for devices that support this and allow me to specify in the devices settings the IP address that I want to use. The current approach of “reserving” the address on the router for Sonos is not a real solution to static IP addressing.

In addition to what @jgatie mentions - a good many Sonos users may never reserve their Sonos IP addresses as their router copes amicably with handing back IP addresses when multiple products reboot over the LAN subnet (usually post-update of firmware) - some routers though may not cope and (apparently) issue duplicate addresses, or they may just stumble and hold up the connection.

In my own experience of loitering around the community here for a while, it often appears to be some routers at the cheaper end of the spectrum, usually supplied by ISP’s ‘for free’, or ‘at minimum cost’, rather than perhaps a more upmarket product.

That said, my router/mesh setup these days has a purchase price of over a £1000, but I still choose to reserve my device IP addresses, but it’s possibly not essential - I just did it automatically on setup of the local network some years ago, following the suggestions from jgatie & many others here.

I’ve also reserved addresses for my home security cameras and a half dozen smart-plugs and numerous Amazon Alexa devices too as they occasionally caused me a similar issue.

It’s not a Sonos requirement though and certainly not something I’ve suggested as being needed in this particular thread.

Ken_Griffiths

Just to add, if asked, I would currently recommend the DHCP reservation of all Sonos IP addresses.

In my own case I have the Sonos addresses ‘fixed’ fairly high up in the local subnet (out the way) at starting address 10.0.0.150 —> starting with the device nearest the router (150), then the next nearest device (151), then the next (152) and so on and so forth. I also keep a check on their SNR levels too, aswell as regularly checking the local network channels in use by neighbouring properties - it’s not a case of ‘set & forget’ as I do find the local wireless environment can change, particularly for the 2.4Ghz WiFi band.

jgatie

I find it hard to fathom why one would rather use various utilities to edit/maintain the static IP’s of each individual device on your network than use a singe UI in the router with all of the devices listed right at your fingertips, but what do I know?

Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

I’ve had a variety of routers here, top of the line consumer devices to start, then Ubiquity and recently Netgate / pfSense gear. Sonos has IP related issues with all of them.

At this point I’m suspecting issues internal to Sonos, maybe some of their legacy open-source core code, that isn’t behaving well.

Thinking three different types of routers, running three different operating systems, all have the same issue is far less likely than it being a Sonos internal issue.

Some day I will get bored enough to dig out an Ethernet packet sniffer and see if I can see anything at that level as I’ve exhausted everything else I can think of.

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