system reliability

Why are you so sure it’s not a network problem? Often on these forums, duplicate ip addresses are the issue, and a network refresh and setting fixed ip addresses for Sonos devices has been the solution. Why are you ruling out that fix - have you already tried it?

You haven’t said what you have tried to fix your issue. What can be ruled out would help, if help is what you’re after?

Yup many times. Infact that is the first thing people say

You want help or you want to vent?

"vent"??  It was a "response".  Don't start jumping on me. 

Ok, to save time where we suggest stuff and you say “I already tried that”, what else have you tried? 

More and more often I find an easy justification for why I don’t even try to help people anymore, despite 15 years of an almost 100% success rate at curing these very problems.  If someone isn’t willing to listen from the get go, why even bother?  

Please elaborate. Try to convince us you're right.

With the information given so far, this has the classic fingerprints of a network issue. Prove us wrong.

Note that simple web browsing, email, and even video streaming are very simple network tasks. SONOS requires more robust network support.

Also, you and your neighbors likely have more devices on your networks than were present a couple years ago. Your dated network hardware or configuration may no longer be able to deal with this. As an example, when I scanned for WiFi access points a decade ago I might see 6-10, most of them mine. The other day I stopped counting at 70 and some of them were using setups known to interfere with nearby WiFi clients.

Here is a description of the problem.  For a couple years I only had one speaker and everything worked fine.  No problems with one speaker.  It wasn’t until I linked up several speakers to the system.  The problem is not consistent.  It may happen once a day or twice a day or I may go for a month with the system working fine before it cuts out.  What I mean by “cuts out”, the system stays powered but the sound stops.  There is no consistency to when this happens.  I have sent diagnostic information to Sonos a few times and they tell me that this will happen at times when multiple speakers are running on the system.  

So what is does your setup involve?

• Make/model of main modem/router?
• Any switches, managed or unmanaged?
• Any other WiFi access points/wireless extenders/powerline adapters?
• Wifi Channels/Channel-widths in use (Are the channels fixed)?
• Any Sonos devices wired and if so where to? (What is the Sonosnet channel set to?)
• Have the device addresses been reserved in the routers DHCP Reservation Table?
• Have you done a scan and aware of neighbouring WiFi channels in use?