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Hi Folks, 

I’ll share some general advice about how Sonos products connect to your network, and the kind of network problems that can result in dropping rooms, to help you understand and solve some challenges with your Sonos system.

Updated 19/4/24

 

2.4 & 5GHz bands (and WiFi 6)

A few older Sonos devices will only connect to the 2.4GHz band, whereas most will connect to the 5GHz band broadcasted from your router. A full list of which devices will connect to 5GHz can be found here on our Supported WiFi modes and security standards for Sonos products page, under “Products that can connect to 5GHz WiFi networks”. Era 100 and Era 300 will connect to 802.11ax (WiFi 6) or 802.11ac (WiFi 5).

Home Theatre products will not connect to 5GHz, as the 5GHz radio is reserved for talking to the surrounds and Sub(s).

Sonos will perform best on 5GHz as it is faster, has lower latency and has less congestion. 2.4GHz still has it’s advantages, however, as physics dictates that it has a better range and a stronger solid-matter penetration ability (it gets through walls, ceilings and furniture easier), so do not be too concerned if your router informs you that your Sonos device is utilising it. Due to the amount of varied use of 2.4GHz, it can be important to ensure that you do not use channels that overlap with other nearby sources (1, 6 & 11 are the only channels that do not overlap - it’s best to stick with these).

Although we used to recommend splitting the bands on your router so that they had different credentials, we now recommend letting the router do it’s work with band steering - this way, one set of credentials can get all your devices connected to the best band for them (this will vary with model and location/reception). If in doubt, please get in touch with our technical support team.

 

Mesh Networks

If you have a mesh WiFi system to extend the range of your WiFi, and your original router is still present, you must either:

  • Configure your router to act as a modem only. Some have a specific option for this (like Virgin Media in the UK), but on most router’s you’d need to disable the DHCP server. If you still need to use the WiFi coming from your router, or if you connect devices via ethernet to it, this is not an option. Doing this will allow you to use the usually more advanced routing features on your mesh (as compared to those on a free, ISP-provided router).

    or
  • Configure your mesh system to be in ‘Bridge/AP mode’ - otherwise it acts as a router and you now have two logical networks running on one hardware layer (this is commonly referred to as Dual DHCP). To find out how to do this, perform an internet search for “ name of your mesh system] mesh bridge mode”. I’ve listed a few common ones here:

 

Netgear Orbi mesh: https://kb.netgear.com/31218/How-do-I-configure-my-Orbi-router-to-act-as-an-access-point

Linksys Velop mesh: https://www.linksys.com/us/support-article?articleNum=243548

Tenda mesh: https://www.tendacn.com/faq/3123.html

Eero mesh: https://support.eero.com/hc/en-us/articles/208276903-How-do-I-bridge-my-eeros-

Google mesh: https://support.google.com/wifi/answer/6240987 - In my experience Google mesh systems can be difficult about going into Bridge mode. Please contact Google if you have trouble with this.

 

Extenders / Boosters / Powerline adapters / Sky Q

Another challenge, with networking and Sonos, is WiFi boosters and extenders. Sonos does not support these as they halve your available bandwidth (due to being half-duplex) and often block multicast transmissions which gets in the way of the Sonos system from operating smoothly. 

Powerline line adaptors can also induce additional issues as they are subject to noise present on your mains power supply (‘noise’ is created by some LED dimmers, for example).

In the UK, Sky Q boxes can be a challenge with Sonos, as they repeat the WiFi from a Sky router (but not from other routers). If a speaker connects to one of these (common with Sonos Home Theatre products) it can result in the speaker being missing from the Sonos app. One option would be to use SonosNet by connecting one or more Sonos devices (not Era - Era does not use or create SonosNet) to the network with an ethernet cable. For other options, I recommend contacting our technical support team.

 

Sonos and Ethernet

To bypass some WiFi configuration issues, you can connect any one (or more) Sonos devices to the network with an ethernet cable (Sonos Move & Roam excluded). Wired Sonos products (other than Era models) will transmit a ‘Sonos only WiFi’ for use by your other Sonos devices (Sonos Move, Roam & Era excluded). This all happens automatically, but sometimes your speakers need a power cycle (unplug them from the wall socket, and plug them back in again after 30 seconds) to help them along. Wiring Sonos will not resolve anything if you have two routers on your network (as described in the Meshes section). Each Sonos player that picks up the ‘Sonos only WiFi’ from the wired Sonos speaker will rebroadcast it, thus extending the range for speakers out of range of the wired one(s). 

When you wire a Sonos product, you go from a configuration like this:

Sonos using your WiFi​​​​

to one like this:

Sonos using Sonosnet

It is worth pointing out, however, that the bandwidth available on 2.4GHz (which SonosNet uses) is limited. If you’re going to group a lot of rooms together, we recommend having one wired unit for every 5 non-wired units, and these wired units would ideally be evenly distributed in your home.

As long as you have good WiFi coverage, your router’s WiFi will often be a better option. As became evident with the release of the Era speakers, we are now moving away from SonosNet which was only really needed back when routers were not the more capable devices that they are today.

 

WiFi Noise / WiFi interference

Sometimes it’s just not a network configuration issue. All WiFi devices (not just Sonos) like to have at least 1 meter / 3 feet of space from all other WiFi devices (and devices that are not on your WiFi but may use similar frequencies). In my experience, one of the most common solutions to a ‘WiFi problem’ has been to physically move a speaker/Boost/Bridge farther away from the router it’s wired to. A common misconception is that the closer the device is to the WiFi broadcasting unit the better - this is not the case. Sometimes speakers are kept very close the router, but this is far from ideal - these devices should not be located less than 1m apart from each other. We have a helpful guide on reducing wireless interference. Close by glass or metal surfaces can reflect WiFi back at a device and also create interference. 

Interference is, I would say, the biggest cause of problems, like dropped rooms, or music interruptions, for Sonos users.

Many non-WiFi devices will use 2.4GHz - mobile/cellular telephones, baby monitors, smart meters, CCTV cameras, DECT phones, microwave ovens - the list goes on. This is another reason why 5GHz can be a better choice for your Sonos system to connect to - less congestion, more channels, more bandwidth, better experience.

 

Home Theatre

As mentioned above, Home Theatre Primary devices (like Ray, Beam or Arc) will connect to 2.4GHz WiFi or SonosNet. However, their surround speakers and Sub(s)/Sub Mini will connect directly to the HT Primary over a dedicated, low latency 5GHz channel. So, if you ever experience audio interruptions on your surrounds or Sub, keep in mind that the cause could be interference near the HT Primary just as much as it could be interference near the surrounds/Sub.

Audio interruptions of TV audio heard on the Home Theatre Primary itself have nothing to do with interference or networking - this is most commonly fixed by forcing the TV’s software to restart by unplugging the TV for a couple of minutes.

 

Network Configuration (IP Reservation and IGMP Filtering)

Sonos needs no more from your network than many other devices, but it can often help to reserve IP addresses for the devices that commonly connect to your network, including Sonos.

Normally, connecting devices send out a broadcast asking to be assigned a unique IP address so that they can be found and recognised on the network. If, for whatever reason, the router loses track of which clients have which addresses (if it reboots but the devices keep their IP, for example) it can start distributing out IP addresses that are already in use. This can result in the Sonos app asking a particular speaker (by it’s IP) if it is still online and ready to operate, but because the speaker is in fact a smart refrigerator, it doesn’t reply, resulting in a room dropping from the Sonos app.

To combat this, reserve IP addresses in your router’s settings pages for all the devices that commonly connect. This will greatly reduce the chance of such an occurrence, and has often been the answer to many user’s woes.

How to do this exactly will depend on your router, but the option is typically found in the Network or DHCP section of the settings. If your router has a Basic/Advanced settings division, this will most likely be in Advanced. Please consult your router’s manual. For a typical installation, your router’s own IP address will be, for example, 192.168.0.1, 192.168.1.1 or 10.0.0.1 (though other addresses are possible and common). The “DHCP pool” will be a range of addresses that the router will distribute to client devices using DHCP, which will often range from 2 to 254 on the last number of the address. It’s easiest to reserve for a device the IP address that it already has, but you can set the numbers to be sequential if you like. Reserved IPs should be within the DHCP pool range, but some routers may allow them to be outside.

After making any such changes, it’s a good idea to reboot the router and the devices that connect to it, but from then on things should be pretty stable.

You may have heard of Static IPs. Static IP addresses are different - they require that the client device has it’s DHCP disabled and is manually configured to forcibly take an IP address from outside of the DHCP pool, without asking the router to decide which address it should be. Sonos devices cannot be configured to use Static IPs.

Not all routers have IGMP Snooping/Filtering, but if yours does, it’s a good idea to turn it on. This feature prevents multicast (more than one destination) data packets on the network that are not destined for Sonos devices from clogging up your speakers’ network input buffer with data it doesn’t want. IGMP-capable network switches can also be bought cheaply, but will only help a Sonos system using SonosNet, and should be fitted between the router and any Sonos devices wired to it.

 

Controllers

It may be that you cannot connect to Sonos not because your Sonos system is having trouble connecting to the network, but because the device you’re running the Sonos app on is unable to communicate with the System (or parts of it).

Although this can be caused by a few things, the most likely are the following:

  • Multiple Access Points - WiFi boosters and Extenders tend not to work very well. Often, you can only connect to rooms that also connect to the same extender your phone is on, or can’t connect to them because your phone is on the main router’s WiFi. We don’t support the use of these products for this reason. Mesh systems are not affected by this. In the UK, Sky Q boxes repeat WiFi from Sky routers in this way.
  • Guest WiFi - You cannot run Sonos on a Guest WiFi, nor can the Sonos app connect to a Sonos system if the controller is connected to a Guest WiFi.
  • On iOS devices - make sure you give the Sonos app permission to access devices on the Local Network (more info on our Sonos app permissions help page)
  • On iOS devices - make to to disable Private Address in the iOS connection options for your WiFi network.

 

Help

Sometimes, no matter how much you know, the speakers themselves have to be ‘consulted’ as to what is going wrong before you will find a resolution. In such situations, the only solution is to get in touch with our technical support team who can receive your Sonos system diagnostics which will tell the agent all about what your system has experienced. If you’re going to call/chat with our tech agents, please try to recreate the issue you are experiencing just before getting in touch, if you can, and try not to reboot any players - reboots clear the system logs and as a result the diagnostics contain less information. 

 

I hope this helps you to understand a bit of what’s going on when no steps taken seem to be working for you. As always, we’re more than happy to assist with getting your Sonos system stable, so please either get in touch with our tech support if nothing works, or write here on the community if you need more guidance.

 

 

Edit: Updated to include additional mesh options, Roam and some other details.

Edit: Updated to include iPhone Local Network and Private Addresses options as they can affect connecting to Sonos

21/4/23 Edit: Changed some advice regarding WiFi bands to reflect software improvements, added Network Configuration and Home Theatre advice

19/4/24 Edit: Clarified some IP reservation details, added brief Static IP explanation.

Hello,

I have a Eero mesh network and have tried the troubleshooting steps above, putting the mesh network into bridge mode but my living room setup (beam, sub and 2x one SL) still disappears from the sonos app everyday! At least once A day I have to search for missing products or update the network on my living room surround setup so that it returns to the app. 
This has been ongoing for about a month now, nothing has changed on my network. As a worst case scenario, yesterday I factory restored the whole living room and still the living room disappears from my app. 
 

please help!!

Try a reserved or static IP. This fixes issues like this regularly when we come across systems that we haven’t installed. See our video below that details this and other fixes. Static IP starts at around 5:20.

 

 

 

I have all my devices (Arc, 2 SL’s and sub) hardwired and have WiFi disabled on all devices. Never had any issues. But I was told once by support while on the phone with them on a different subject that I should not be going 100% wired and only to attach the arc as wired and let everything else be wireless. Any thoughts as to why they suggested that?

It’s the original design of the system. However, if you’re experiencing no issues, I’d suggest leaving it alone. 

I’ll add my experience with Nest (Google) mesh and S1 products in case it helps someone:

When setting up for the first time with a mesh system make sure you setup the Sonos products with only the mesh router operational.  No mesh points or nodes powered on. Trying to set up Sonos products via mesh points has caused me all sorts of issues.  It seems (from my experience) the Sonos products need a direct mesh router connection to configure correctly.  This doesn’t have to be wired.  Wireless worked just fine for me.

Once all Sonos units have configured via the mesh router and are connected to the mesh wireless, moving them around the house and having them connect to the mesh via points or nodes works with no issue at all (so far) :-)

 

Hi @Bluesden 

Thank you for sharing that - I’m sure someone will find it extremely helpful!

This was one of the most insightful posts I've ever read. Thank you. 

 

I'm running a large network with over 200 devices and lots of Sonos. Everything Sonos related is actually running fine, but something is creating some kind of wonkiness with other devices on the network. 

Ive been isolating different clients and when I powered up the Sonos it impacted the sync of a bunch of 2.4 GHz smart light switches. So this post really helped me better understand. 

 

Here's my topology, do you think there is anyway Sonos could create a switch loop? Is there anyway a wired speaker could accidentally be connected wirelessly at the same time? The Eero people think some type of hub or router is on my network that's changing IPs. 

 

 

 

​​​​​​Modem Bridge > Eero PRO6 > Unmanaged Dedicated Sonos Switch > (11Amps, 5 Arc, 4 Beams gen2, 2 Subs G3, 1 Sub G1, Playbar, and 2 Play 1s). All speakers are wired expect for the 2 play 1s. And one sub is wireless currently. 

Sonos is working great. But trying to figure out what's causing some other network instability when it's on. Let me know if anyone has any thoughts or experiments I should try? 

 

Hi @WilsonLane 

The only way a device will not take whatever IP address the router decides it should get is if it has been manually configured to ask for a specific IP. Given that you can’t tell Sonos devices to do this, your Eero is entirely responsible for the IP addresses assigned to Sonos devices. As mentioned in some of the replies here, manual assignment of IP addresses in your network can make things more stable, but this would need to be done in your Eero configuration app/page.

Even though your Sonos system works well, it may be worth getting in touch with our technical support team, as diagnostics will be able to tell us if any devices on the network are being assigned IP addresses that Sonos is already using, or if there is any sign of multicast flooding on your network.

I hope this helps.

WilsonLane,

I recommend using a network scanner, such as FING. The scanner can help find duplicate IP addresses. I strongly recommend reserving IP addresses for all regular network clients. Note that the scan can only find current duplicates, not future duplicates created by devices that are presently offline.

I had the same issue as you many years back and traced it to the unmanaged switch that all of the SONOS and other equipment was connected to that required STP / RSTP to be active. The system worked fine until certain devices were turned on and then a “Ethernet Broadcast Storm” occurred which caused the entire network (Wired and Wireless) to fail.

The solution was to have all of the wired SONOS products connected to a managed Ethernet Switch with proper STP / RSTP configuration.

My configuration is Xfinity XB7 Modem -- TP-LINK Managed Switch - Main Switch - TP-LINK Managed Switch - Home Office - TP-LINK Managed Switch - Living Room. I have most of my SONOS equipment connected to the three TP-LINK Managed Switches. The other SONOS devices are connected to the SONOS Net. In addition, I also have the latest generation XFINITY Pods to increase the wireless range of the Xfinity XB7 Modem. All of the network cable is CAT5E.

Hi @WilsonLane 

The only way a device will not take whatever IP address the router decides it should get is if it has been manually configured to ask for a specific IP. Given that you can’t tell Sonos devices to do this, your Eero is entirely responsible for the IP addresses assigned to Sonos devices. As mentioned in some of the replies here, manual assignment of IP addresses in your network can make things more stable, but this would need to be done in your Eero configuration app/page.

Even though your Sonos system works well, it may be worth getting in touch with our technical support team, as diagnostics will be able to tell us if any devices on the network are being assigned IP addresses that Sonos is already using, or if there is any sign of multicast flooding on your network.

I hope this helps.

Hi all, first post here so please go gentle on me.

 

I have a handful of Sonos gear, Play:1s, 3s, 5s and a Connect:Amp running on S2.  All of my devices are running wireless, on their own ‘Sonos’ SSID.  They’re also running across 3 or 4 access points (TP-Link Omada), and all devices are fixed-DHCP on my router.

 

The wireless network is technically NOT a mesh setup, although two APs do mesh together (wireless connection from my office to my workshop), however all APs share the same WLAN configurations (SSIDs, security etc).  Protable devices like phones and tablets can switch from AP to AP without issue or user knowledge.  Aside from the occasionall weak wi-fi signal strength (the Connect:Amp is in my workshop, the AP is outside - metal walls not so good for wi-fi),  I’ve found the set up to be almost 100% stable.  Interestingly the Sonos devices connect to the wireless networks in a mixture of 2.4 & 5GHz.  I assuming this is dictated by the proximity to the AP.

 

As mentioned above, I’ve used the TP-Link Omada system: this makes the multiple APs within my wireless network ‘look like one’.  However, what it really does is:

     Easily configures all APs to have the same SSID, security

     Centralises control of your WLAN

     Makes adding/replacing/removing an AP easy

I think what you could do, if you have more than one AP (say, Router WLAN plus a second wired AP), is to simply replicate the SSID and security on the second AP.  I did this when one on of my Omada APs died and the SONOS gear kept working fine.  Maybe this was the SONOSNET bit doing its job, I’m not sure.  But at least on SONOS device cannot connect to any other SONOS device and this one kept working fine on the temporary AP.

Anyway, what I wanted to do was pass on an example of a multi-AP, multi-SSID WLAN across several buildings where SONOS devices, all wirelessly connected, are working quite well.  This is not to gloat, just to give someone who has some struggles confidence they’ll work it out.  I have been fortunate that I’ve not had significant challenges, but here’s an overview of my network configuration.  I hope it might be of benefit to you.

     Router - configured for Fixed DHCP for all usual devices (think phones, computers, SONOS                  devices etc)

     WLAN - SSID ‘Sonos”, SPA-Personal security (I don’t have neighbours close by)

     APs in service - 4

     SONOS devices - 7, shared across 3 or 4 APs as determined by WLAN management

     Two of the SONOS devices are operating ‘individually’, that is, they cannot possibly connect to             another SONOS device other than across ‘my networks’.

 

As above, I think the main points of my excessive post are go for Fixed DHCP on your router; these speakers don’t move so lock in their IP address, and if you’re running multiple APs, configure the same SSID across all of them.  Most APs will handle a couple of SSIDs at least, so this should be kinda straight forward to sort out.

 

Disclaimer - I don’t have/use propriety mesh systems like Google Mesh or Orbi etc.  What I’ve described may or may not be possible on these systems.

 

Good luck with your set up.  Reply if you like; if you have questions I’ll try to answer them.

Kind Regards.

You guys are all techies and can barely figure this out.  For the novice, we got no shot.  This product - many years later, is so far from plug and play.  In a wireless world, this product is terrible  

Hi @Direwolf 

You guys are all techies and can barely figure this out.  For the novice, we got no shot.  This product - many years later, is so far from plug and play.  In a wireless world, this product is terrible  

For the majority of users, Sonos is plug-and-play, and works out of the box. However, Sonos systems (due to the nature of the task they perform) utilise their host network in a way that many other devices do not, and therefore can highlight issues not readily apparent from other use-cases. We are here to help, however, as is our fantastic community - if you are having trouble with a particular issue, please create a new thread at Ask A Question, and I’m sure you will get the help you need.

This forum is the closest I can find to the subject of my question, so I’ll post it here.

I have a dozen or so Sonos products including surround sound setup with Beam (2nd gen), a sub and two 3’s for rear speakers and various 1’s around the rest of the house. I installed a Google mesh system with the ISP’s cable going right into a Google node (no ISP router). Three other Google “nodes” around the house and all show strong signal and 80+Mbps speed.

However, occasionally a Sonos speaker will cut out or take its time coming online after being selected. One tech support person suggested a Sonos “Connect” may be helpful. I bought one but after reading this thread, I’m a bit afraid to try it and I’m tempted to leave well enough alone!

The question is: should I include the “connect” in the system and if so, how? Do I just plug the Connect into one of the Google nodes in the middle of the house? If so, which connection point on the node?

Thanks for any insights.

 

 

This forum is the closest I can find to the subject of my question, so I’ll post it here.

I have a dozen or so Sonos products including surround sound setup with Beam (2nd gen), a sub and two 3’s for rear speakers and various 1’s around the rest of the house. I installed a Google mesh system with the ISP’s cable going right into a Google node (no ISP router). Three other Google “nodes” around the house and all show strong signal and 80+Mbps speed.

However, occasionally a Sonos speaker will cut out or take its time coming online after being selected. One tech support person suggested a Sonos “Connect” may be helpful. I bought one but after reading this thread, I’m a bit afraid to try it and I’m tempted to leave well enough alone!

The question is: should I include the “connect” in the system and if so, how? Do I just plug the Connect into one of the Google nodes in the middle of the house? If so, which connection point on the node?

Thanks for any insights.

Firstly do you mean a Sonos ‘Boost’ rather than a ‘Connect’ - A ‘Connect’ is ‘usually’ used for connecting external audio sources to a Sonos system, like a Turntable or CD player etc?

Anyhow, perhaps have a read of this thread from Sonos Staff and first see if that assists you:

Sonos on WiFi Mesh

Yes! The “Boost”. My bad. Thanks for catching that.

Yes! The “Boost”. My bad. Thanks for catching that.

Ah that’s okay 👍 see if the linked thread assists - it’s basically a case of having your router in bridge mode. The Google Nest in router mode, with its satellite Hubs. Then wire just the Boost to the primary Nest/Router only (do not wire anything to the satellite hubs).

In the Sonos App ‘Settings/System/Networks’ area set the SonosNet channel to one that is not used by the Google WiFi. I would also remove your WiFi SSID/credentials from that area of the Sonos App too when you have all up and running.

Hope that assists.

Thanks, Ken. I will give it all a try when I’m feeling lucky! I appreciate the help!

I have Sonos Play:5, Sonos One, and Connect AMP … I love them all BUT they have started to constantly disappear from the system … randomly … I cannot figure out the pattern … I suspect the root cause being my Nokia Super WIFI mesh system, I have two, one Nokia connected to router via cable and one more as extender … all Sonos connected via WIFI and I thought this should be possible without having to think about which of the Nokias to connect to …

 

Any advice on how to get to a stable network would be very much appreciated.

Thanks, Erik 

 

Try unplugging all your Sonos devices from power, and while they’re unplugged, reboot your router. Once the router has a couple of minutes to come back up, plug back in your Sonos devices.

Deleted..posted in error. Sorry!😥

Try unplugging all your Sonos devices from power, and while they’re unplugged, reboot your router. Once the router has a couple of minutes to come back up, plug back in your Sonos devices.

Airgetlam, thanks for your suggestion, and why should this work?

This process would have multiple possible corrections in it, the most prevalent of fixing an issue with your router and IP assignments. It sometimes occurs that a router ‘loses’ its place in the DHCP  table, and begins assigning duplicate IPs. A refresh of the router by rebooting it usually takes care of this, and when the Sonos boots back up, it requests a fresh IP from the router. Plus you get the benefit of refreshed systems on both the router and the Sonos devices, in case there were any issues there. 

I wish I’d known any of this before buying these things. Yes, I have an extender. No I had no idea that would be an issue. What a waste of my money.

When we had wired speakers, we laid down the wires once and never had to think about it again. Now I spent 10-60 minutes a day troubleshooting. Argghh!

 

 

When I do plugin a Sonos speaker, the playlists skip all the time and I get network errors, cannot connect to device errors up the yin yang. When I unplug it, no problems except I can’t group all 3 of my speakers together. The one on the extender acts alone!

 

 

Sonos One and Sonos SL as stereo pair.  Router shows L+? in system details.  I think this is because router allocates one speaker on 5GHz band, second on 2.4GHz.  Stereo works fine BUT Trueplay does not appear as available?  Is this because of band allocation and how can I resolve?  Not quite as technically knowledgeable as some of above postings 🙁

Sonos One and Sonos SL as stereo pair.  Router shows L+? in system details.  I think this is because router allocates one speaker on 5GHz band, second on 2.4GHz.  Stereo works fine BUT Trueplay does not appear as available?  Is this because of band allocation and how can I resolve?  Not quite as technically knowledgeable as some of above postings 🙁

Sounds like an SSDP multicast discovery issue between your controller and speaker operating on a different band - this used to be an issue with some BT (British Telecom) Routers, Smarthub v2, just as an example.

I would first check for router firmware updates that’s if it’s your own router, or maybe see if running things on SonosNet may work any better for you. I would certainly reserve your Sonos IP addresses in your routers DHCP reservation table.. Unfortunately, there are lots of things that can help improve device discovery (even changing router WiFI channels and reducing the 2.4Ghz band channel-width to 20Mhz only), but maybe try some of the things mentioned and see if they may help to resolve your issue.

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