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Forum Discussion
Orbi RBR50 and Sonos Playbar
I have tried to use one of the ethernet ports on the back of the RBR50 satellite unit to the Sonos Playbar and it brought down the satellite unit (lost its connection to the base). The base router was...
The playbar is certainly not 100% shielded, because it contains a 2.4GHz radio, used for WiFi and Sonosnet, and a 5 GHz radio used for surround-sound inter-speaker links.
According to Sonos, once you plug one speaker into Ethernet it converts your entire Sonos system to a Boost setup. That means the playbar will start broadcasting it's own separate proprietary network on 2.4 Ghz. That network is uncoordinated with Orbi and it can interfere with Orbi. When Sonos is set to use Wifi, i.e not plugged into your satellite, Sonos connects to the satellite as a client, so they cannot interfere.
To avoid interference in (wired) Boost mode, you need to make sure Orbi and Sonos are using non-overlapping wifi channels. This is done under the Advanced Settings menu in the Sonos controller. Because Orbi uses 40 Mhz channels on 2.4Ghz, you must set Sonos on channel 11 and Orbi on channel 1, or vice versa.
I hope this helps explain what you are seeing, and why things are very different plugged-in and not plugged-in.
This may help. I will give it a test. The only thing that I don't understand is why the satellite and base would not just negotiate a clear channel. This should just work for a non-technical user. Also note that I now have the base router pulgged into another Sonos PlayBar with zero configuration need. I did not need to switch any channels.
Sonos will try to channel hop, but it's always better to manage the channels yourself.
As I wrote above, you should only plug ONE Sonos component into Ethernet. It would be incorrect to plug in the second playbar if one Sonos playbar was already wired. This could create a network loop, which can crash the network.