Asus Aimesh incompatibility with Sonos - solved!!

  • 15 July 2021
  • 3 replies
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  • Contributor I
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Asus AiMesh incompatibility with Sonos - solved!  After updating my Asus firmware to version xxx180, Sonos would not connect - even though my Asus router and Sonos apps both could see LL 6 of my Sonos devices.  After hours of mediating between Asus and Sonos reps, trying to solve why SONOS would not connect wirelessly after the Asus firmware update, I realized that I could just go around it. I didn’t need a SONOS boost to create a separate wireless network and add more signals and potential interference into the house.  ( Sonos says this is to improve functionality - but it’s really to get around how incompatible and fragile their connectivity is.)   I just took my old extender that the mesh router had replaced, and connected it with Ethernet cable directly permanently into the Sonos soundbar.  it worked immediately.  the ac extender is not mesh, but it received the new signal like any other device. Not elegant, but better than wasting the time.  Sonos doesn’t need a lot of signal to operate well.  Sonos had solutions like setting Asus Airtime Fairness to disable, which didn’t work; or dividing the 2 and 5 ghz bands into two separately named networks, so that Sonos could receive exclusively the 2.4ghz, but that means the whole mesh single-network advantage is dead,  Asus clearly has problem with firmware that has been incompatible since around August 2020 - don't update!  


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I didn’t need a SONOS boost to create a separate wireless network and add more signals and potential interference into the house.  ( Sonos says this is to improve functionality - but it’s really to get around how incompatible and fragile their connectivity is.)

Eh? Fragile connectivity to what exactly?

For the record the SonosNet mesh long pre-dated the ability to connect directly to a router’s (potentially awkward) WiFi. 

 

I just took my old extender that the mesh router had replaced, and connected it with Ethernet cable directly permanently into the Sonos soundbar. 

So you’re running the extender as a wireless bridge, with the Sonos system now in SonosNet mode. Unless the soundbar is the only Sonos component and you’ve “disabled WiFi” on it you’ve actually created a “separate wireless network”...

Thanks!  I'm not very technical as you can tell … but my understanding is that Sonos "internal” mesh system exists anyway. Adding the Boost adds just that much more signal from crosstalk between the one or two Boosts as well, plus the signal into my “n" soundbar May not be as strong as from caking in my old “ac” extender. Especially right near your main router. Maybe I'm overestimating the problem ( or just have it wrong because of my simplistic understanding) but we also suffer from a lot of interference even from neighbors routers. So eliminating two nodes is a plus.  I'm sure there are many more elegant solutions but this avoided solving a lot of complexity are you getting deep into settings which are beyond many of we nontechies capabilities - Hint most of the phone agents as well

That is “cabling in” with Ethernet from my old ac/wifi extender directly into the “n”/wifi soundbar. The Boost would sit right next to the main router. Previously, I had interference from just my Verizon main router (that connects into the mesh) and had to disable its radios.  I'm anticipating that Boost could cause similar issue?