ASUS RT-AC88U

  • 4 September 2016
  • 62 replies
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Userlevel 3
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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62 replies

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It’s on their hardware compatability list:

https://sonos.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/42/~/sonos-and-incompatible-hardware
OMG! I spent two days attempting to set up Sonos system with new ASUS RT-88U router. This worked!!!! Happy New Year now since I missed it working on this.
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.
This was driving me crazy. Once I disabled Air fairness, we are up and running. I was getting concerned I had to replace the new router or get another just for the Sonos. I really enjoy the speakers and would have hated to move to something else.

Thanks for figuring this out.
make sure that you set it for both your bands (2.4 and 5ghz) !

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 this router and have been having the same issues. I'll try this out and see if it works for me. Thanks!
Works great, thanks so much for sharing!
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.
Wish I'd seen this thread 2 hours ago. Worked like a charm!
Oh my god.... it was driving me nuts... I cannot believe someone figured it out!!! thank you so much
Be sure to set it for all bands!
Thanks a lot, you made my weekend. @Sonos Staff: please include this in your FAQ!
Just create my account on this forum to thank you!!

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:

  1. Disable Airtime Fairness
  2. 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.

thanks, its working for me at the moment. hopefully it fixed. thanks team...

Thank you - this also worked for me with the newer (essentially the same but WiFi 6 compatible) ASUS RT-AX88U

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.

You are my hero. 

This solution worked perfectly, thanks for your help!
Thanks All. I spent 8 hours of my weekend trying to resolve my Sonos connectivity problems- including 1:20 on the phone to the UK support guys from Singapore. I will try the fix as soon as I get home.
New playbar and sub wouldn't configure until I changed this setting. THANK YOU!!!
Worked for me too. Thanks!
thanks man, that worked for me as well! Just created an account here to post this. Surprisingly even the cable setup did not work with this setting enabled.
So glad to have found this. I was having the same problem which was also occurring with a heos system--took forever to connect the app to the speakers and several minutes later speakers would disappear from the app an no longer controllable. It started happening when I introduced the rt-88u router so I knew it was related. I played around with a lot of settings. Disabling airtime fairness fixed both the sonos and heos systems immediately. thanks again!