I recently bought a new wifi router/access point an ASUS RT-AC88U
Once I switched over to it I found that I had sporadic access to my Sonos speakers (Play 3, Playbar + Sub).
Sometimes I could connect to the speakers, sometimes I couldn't. When I could connect I'd sometimes be able to see all the rooms and other times only 1.
I played with a bunch of wifi settings and finally tracked down the culprit.
Wireless menu >> Professional Tab >> Airtime Fairness
This setting is enabled by default. When I disabled it my access to my Sonos was restored to it's former fully functioning glory.
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thanks, its working for me at the moment. hopefully it fixed. thanks team...
This Worked.. Thank a lot for amazing resolution.. after a lot of troubleshooting this saved the day
New to Sonos...was having a very frustrating experience until I discovered this post. Thanks for sharing! Everything worked great after this router setting change.
I have been fighting with my Sonos One SL speakers on an Asus RT-AC88U router for way too many hours. Yes this looks very promising.
Thank you for time spent workng on this. My router (RT-AC88U) have worked flawlessly with my Sonos stuff for two years, until last week that is. Intermittent connection, not finding speakers etc. Tried “everything” even a factory reset for all devices and the cumbersome work of setting it all up again. It was almost not possible. But with all stuff connected the problem persisted. Played one speaker sometimes, did not find the others at other times and so forth. Extremely annoying. Tried Sonos support but they never answered the hotline (1,5 hours in waiting line) Browsed a lot but stumbled across your tips today. Changed the airtime fairness setting and 1 minute later everything was working perfectly!
If I understand Sonos systems correctly, they send out IGMP multicast signals which need to make it to your iOS devices to have Airplay see them. So turn on IGMP snooping on your wireless settings (in Asus, under the Professional tab in the Wireless menu if I recall correctly. Might need to reboot.
I’ve had no problems with a Sonos ONE once I switched to direct-to-router wiring.
Asus just issued 4.386 as a major update to AiMesh; .384 is probably more stable at present.
I am also having issues with ASUS RT-AC68U router not recognizing Sonos Connect Amps correctly all the time (not displaying on the network map when I log into the router). They are wired directly to the router. Similarly my wife and i do not see all of the systems on our phones or will see different systems each time. I have disabled Airtime Fairness on both bands which is the Sonos advised fix for this router. I have read that putting the ConnectAmps on a switch before the router may help and will try.
However in case that does not work...is there a known prior firmware that may work (currently have 3.0.0.4.386_40558). Thanks for any help.
To fix Sonos issues with intermittent availability or connection to Apple AirPlay on ASUS’ standard/recent router firmware, whether using single or multiple ASUS routers in AIMesh or AP mode:
Wireless / Professional from the Settings web menu in the router admin.
Then:
- Disable Airtime Fairness
- Enable IGMP snooping
Then switch to your other router wireless bands (2.4Ghz, 5GHz-1, and potentially 5GHz-2 depending on your router model) and repeat.
Airtime Fairness definitely interferes with the signaling Sonos uses to communicate and to connect with Apple Airplay 2 Audio. Reports vary on IGMP but it seemed to help with my setup.
I have set the Airtime fairness and cannot still get my speakers to connect. I have two Sonos One and two Play1 speakers.
I tried the Sonos Boost but the Boost could not connect even hard wired into the router. Ideas????
Good god. Thank you. Was getting ready to return my Sonos but this thread saved me.
Thank you so much. Wasted a couple of days on this. Genuinely interested to find out how you discovered it was that setting in the first place.
And should add my Beam had been working fine up until about a week ago, but then Alexa stopped working on it and came across this issue only when I reset the Beam and tried to set it up again. No issues with configuring it when I first installed it last November, same RT-AC88U router.
OMG!!!! Thank you to OP, after more than half a year of hair-pulling frustration and off-the-wall ranting at the dark arts of wifi this was the one thing that finally did the trick. Sonos should pay you a commission; I was on the verge of giving up and moving to a different - and non-Sonos - brand.
Just remember to fix both bands, as already mentioned by others… 
This worked like a charm…..after 8 hours of hairpulling….changing this setting fixed everything. Thank you so much for posting!
Thank you - this also worked for me with the newer (essentially the same but WiFi 6 compatible) ASUS RT-AX88U
You are my hero.
This is driving me crazy.
I have a Beam connected via ethernet and a couple of Play1 and a Sub using an RT-AC86U router, everything worked fine.
Since I had connection issues at my place I bought another router and as a mesh node also enabled the smart wifi option.
Things stopped working, I saw the sub was not connected anymore to my system.
The next is the timeline of the events:
- I removed and add the sub again but no luck.
- I started searching and disabled the “airtime fairness” option since that was a known issue.
- Done, it start working again.
- Sub stopped worked for no reason, nothing changed.
- I removed it an try to get it back again, this time is not working. I got stuck when I have to press the button, the app is not detecting the device.
- I tried to reset it, the app detects the device but gets stuck in the “Connecting” screen.
- I notice the both Play1 works fine out of the box, I have to do nothing.
- I read somewhere that the DHCP might have something to do, that might be an internal IP issue (
). So I attached the devices to their own IP, it won’t hurt. - I tried to connect the sub to the router via ethernet, AFAIK Sonos will use the “less cost” path so via cable device should be able to join the Sonos system.
- Nope.
- Restart the BEAM
- Nope
- Restart the BEAM and reset the Sub
- Nope
- I created a “guest network” on the router for 2.4ghz, removed the ethernet cable from the Beam and sub.
- Nope
- Tried the above like 3 times
- I started to write this post while trying last one (actually last thing I did it was creating a “guest network for 5ghz”) and it worked
What bugs me like hell is that the Play1 worked fine all the time, it’s just the Sub the one that refuses to work. I’m afraid this won’t last too long and Sub will get disconected again. I refuse to think Sub has hardware problems, I saw many router/network problems and this was working since I added a mesh client to the home network.
Anyone has any idea or suggestion how can I get this to work?
Userlevel 7
+22
Send in a diagnostic and get one of the 24x7 Sonos support sites (on the contact page) to look at it.
If you rebooted it isn't likely to be DHCP although you might want to assign static/reserved IP addresses to avoid future issues.
DDNS isn't going to impact Sonos that I'm aware of. Regular DNS can be an issue if you use a blocker to filter out sites. Whitelist the Sonos ones to deal with that the easy way.
If you rebooted it isn't likely to be DHCP although you might want to assign static/reserved IP addresses to avoid future issues.
DDNS isn't going to impact Sonos that I'm aware of. Regular DNS can be an issue if you use a blocker to filter out sites. Whitelist the Sonos ones to deal with that the easy way.
Update to my reply of last night.
The issue came back today, I open spotify app and tru to connect to my play 1 but It never does.
I open the sonos controller, it may conect for about 3 seconds and then drop.
I have clear the way of any interference, I have re boot both, app and play 1.
Is the anything related to DCHP or DDNS ?
Thanks
The issue came back today, I open spotify app and tru to connect to my play 1 but It never does.
I open the sonos controller, it may conect for about 3 seconds and then drop.
I have clear the way of any interference, I have re boot both, app and play 1.
Is the anything related to DCHP or DDNS ?
Thanks
I new It was something with my new router,bbut never thought that asus had that option airtime fairnes affecting my sonos.
I even bought a boost thinking I need it.
Thanks for the fix
I even bought a boost thinking I need it.
Thanks for the fix
Outside of this fix, is everyone liking this router? I’ve heard mixed security reliability for Asus?
Been trying to fix this all morning !! Thank you so much 😃
Thanks! Just like everyone else, this is a savior of a post. Just about threw my new Beam and Sub out the window.
I have created a forum account just to testify that I had similar issues with my sonos after upgrading from ac68u to ac88u. After disabling the airtime fairness, problem solved!
Thank you thank you thank you this fixed my problem instantly!!!
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