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Forum Discussion
SONOS Compatability with Orbi
Is Orbi compatable with the SONOS mesh network? I have an extensive SONOS system throughout my house (7000 sq ft). It works flawlessly and I have wondered why a mesh network for a LAN application has not been available before now. If Orbi works like my SONOS system and is compatable, it will be a real game changer.
148 Replies
The underlying technical question is whether Orbi will support the spanning tree protocol (STP) because STP is what Sonos depends on. Given that none of Netgear's other home networking products support it, it seems unlikely that Orbi will have it. Hopefully, someone from Netgear will weigh in.
Just to clarify. I'm not interested in making my SONOS components run on the Orbi network. I just do not want the two networks interfering with and causing issues with one another. I am hoping that they can coexist. I do not know enough about this to know if it should be a legitimate concern.
AFAIUI, Sonos components can use their own wireless connection to communicate. It should not interfere with the Orbi's network any more than a neighboring Wi-Fi network would. The only difference would be signal strength. Provided the two channels used by Orbi and Sonos, respectively, are far enough apart, it should be fine.
- Any new info on this? I just hooked up my Orbi and having frequent droupouts on my Sonos now.
Hello adamfox
I would try changing wireless channels on the orbi it could be interfering with the channels the sonos is using.
DarrenM
My Sonos keeps dropping out as well. Did you end up finding a solution? Help would be very much appreciated.
Anything new on this? I purchased both at the same time. I had a few days of flawless Sonos on my airport extreme before swapping in orbi.
But I don't think it is limited to Sonos. At least one satellite is dropping all connectivity periodically while a sonos is wired to it. I haven't been able to reproduce the problem at will or without sonos wired as nothing else is "constant use" so if it goes down, I don't know unless I happen to be connecting to a device on that orbi that can't move to another one.
However, Sonos may be working better in purely wireless mode with nothing wired to any Orbi. I'm still experimenting.
No matter what, if Orbi can't deal with Sonos, it's going back to the store. Sonos products are probably the best wireless devices I've ever purchased. I will go through dozens of wifi products before giving up Sonos.
--Derrek
- My Sonos speakers were setup to use the WiFi instead of a Bridge/Boost. Switching the 2.4GHz channel on the Orbi from auto to 6 seemed to have helped things.
I already switched orbi to 1 and sonos to 11 to guarantee clean wifi signal. I don't know if sonosnet is used at all when nothing is wired.
I don't think it is wifi though. I think it is due to the fact that I tried wiring at least one sonos device. So far with everything on wireless it has been working (knock on wood. it's only been a few hours).
I'm wondering if orbi has issues with the STP protocol used by Sonos when wired.
There is still evidence that at least one orbi satellite is periodically dropping all connections for a couple minutes. My Apple TV dissappears as does a few other things connected to that orbi.--Derrek
- Could be wrong but i believe I read somewhere that Netgear routers don't support STP.
I read that as well. But they don't need to support it, they just need to not interfere with it.
It's possible something about the Orbi star topology and MU-MIMO router links does cause problems. That would be unfortunate.
I imagine since the orbi actually has 3 physical "switches" with traffic moving through 802.11ac between those switches it is a distinct possibility that STP creates problems.
If all orbi issues go away when Sonos is wifi only, I likely have my answer. We'll see. Then I need to decide if I'm moving to eero or google wifi.
--DerrekI've tried changing channels on the Orbi, but to no avail... The problem can't be the WIFI coverage because the coverage throughout the whole house with the Orbi is FAN-TASTIC; every inch is covered at top speed. The Sonos doesn't just cut out, the sound sometimes completely stops all together. The strange thing is that the day I installed the Orbi, Sonos worked flawlessly. Then the next day, without having changed anything, the cutouts started... I am extremely disappointed.
- Anything that was connected to the router was stable for me. But I didn't test that thoroughly. So a power line from the router should be fine.
If I were to use power line to get around the house, I would wire them to eeros or google wifi and skip the mesh hop penalty. Best of both worlds.
In fact, I may try that if eero doesn't cut it.
--DerrekHello everyone
Can anyone that is having issues with there sonos message me what sonos product they are having issues with and also what firmware there orbi system is on. I may also need some debug logs from you so I can send them to the engineers to investigate the issue.
DarrenM
- All sonos play 1 and connect as well as other devices. I was on the latest 1.4.x on router and both satellites but have since returned the orbi to Costco so I can't help with debug logs.
Sorry.I installed Orbi on December 12, 2016 and it has been updated to the latest firmware 1.4.0.18.
I have Sonos Play-3 speaker for more than two years now. It came iwth Sonos bridge as well. I am always using bridge to connect this speaker. So I connected Sonos bridge to my switch and repaired my Sonos speaker. I have no issues with Orbi at all. It is set on channel 11. If you have issues then you may try different channels. I am happy customer, no issues with Sonos, no issues with Hue lights or Nest thermostat and Nest protect devices.
- Are any constant use devices connected to Orbi satellites? I had no issues with anything connected to the Orbi router.
I recieved my eero and google wifi today. I have first impressions of each.
eero is stupid easy to install/setup. It just worked. It does take 15+ minutes to update all the devices to the latest firmware.
Once updated everytihng was fine. However, I found speed tests to be quite dissapointing as I moved around my house (50->60mbps was considered a good test result). And it just generally felt slower all around. Speed test were also highly erratic. And it's own internal speed test doesn't get anywhere near my actual internet speed (90mbps instead of 150). Laptop tests while connected to the main router also didn't get me full 150mbps+.
I unplugged eero and plugged in google wifi with relatively low expectations. Thus far, google wifi has been significantly faster. Sitting one hop away from the router, I am still getting 110mbps while streaming a movie downstairs and sonos upstairs. Setup was not quite as smooth. Had a few hiccups but it got through it. Same amount of time.
At this moment, Google Wifi is winning hands down. When you consider it is also $200 less ($100 in my case because of black friday), it's hard to argue with it. I'll be returning eero and giving google wifi to my mom for christmas. I just got 140mbps on my laptop one hope from the main router. I may be ordering a second one of these. ;)
Neither of them can compete with Orbi when it is stable. Orbi is obscenely good (Even at $200 over google wifi). If netgear wants to send me a 3 piece Orbi kit to test and help debug until the problems are resolved, I'll consider sticking with it. Otherwise, google wifi is likely where I'm going. (Or possibly back to a linksys ea9500 which worked surprisingly well once I worked around some issues)
I'll be using each of them over the next few days. Hopefully, they will just work.
--DerrekThat's great news to hear google wifi is working for you. Mine arrives this weekend and will replace Orbi, which is being returned. I'll take "slower" throughput over stability. I will rarely need such huge throughput in real use---sonos dropping will drive me to tears though.
I plugged in the eero again to see if I can work through speed issues on it. Re-setting it up was quite frustrating but I think the initial setup may have been slow because the new firmware didn't entirely take on the base unit. After a full reset everything was back up.
Speeds were now on par with Google Wifi. In fact, both are now almost at the speed I really wanted. However, on eero, Sonos devices started disappearing. Ironically, the ones that stopped playing music are the ones I can still see in Sonos app. The other sonos is still playing but I can't control it. And it is not the base unit. I am currently using Sonos network from one wired sonos connect. That is the one that stopped, so I have no idea how/why the other continued to play. Very strange.
Both eero and google wifi suffer from two very annoying problems. First: 2 available ports for wired devices on a satellite just isn't enough. And 1 available on the main unit basically means it has to be some kind of switch (in my case, it's my airport extreme with 3 more ports as well as a time machine backup drive). Second: This cloud control crap needs to stop. Eeros app was constantly in a "we can't talk to your eero" state despite being *on the eeros network* which had internet acces. That mostly went away after the reset. But, both eero and google wifi need some kind of local mode. Google didn't actually show any issue with this. I'm wondering if they already have a local mode for the majority of communication with your own access points.
Orbi really got a lot of things right. I just want it to be stable. A strong backhaul with 4 ports on satellites. Not requiring cloud (BTW, I like having the cloud aspects, I just don't like it being a requirement like eero). Whichever I give to my mom, I will be able to manage it from my house. So, as long as her internet is up, I can make sure things are working. That's very nice.
Except for the Sonos blip this morning, eero has been pretty solid. And its app is better than google's in terms of ease of use and features (though possibly not for long). In the real world, for most people, this system will be fine. It's getting more speed than most people's internet connection. I'm going to run it with constant sonos for a day or two, and then switch to google wifi for a few days.
Right now, either system is looking "good enough". I see why so many reviews are basically "google because it's cheaper". There's no clear winner except in price. There are still some issues I haven't tried. I know wifi calling on eero (if your iphone/service support it) has been reported as problematic on the new firmware. Fortunately, I have great cell signal, so that's not a huge issue for me.
Hey Netgear, get orbi working so I can stop this nonsense and get my mom and myself functioning orbi.
Will report in again soon.
--Derrek
Great the Google is working out. Yesterday I was setting up a new XBox One S. So I figured I would start hard wired into the router over ethernet. It had to load up the update initially and it was painfully slow. After about twenty minutes I disconnnected the cable from the Orbi router and let the XBox find the wireless. After that everything was fast. Installed a game which had an 8 Gb update and agin everything was fine over wireless. Installed another game and I notice again it went painfully slow. This time I could see the download speed dropped to 785Kbs - 2.5 mbs over wireless. This is in the same room as the Orbi router. So I ran a speed test through my cell phone which showed 200mbs and ran one through my computer over ethernet into the router which came out to around 170mbs. The wireless remained extremely slow so I plugged the ethernet cable back in to the XBox and speeds were now into the 70 - 90mbs. Definitely have to keep an eye on this. In answer to a previous question regarding devices hooked into the satellite. Optimum placement of the satellite did not allow for this so, no I am not hooked directly into the satellite. Prinicpal use of the system was for wireless and for the entertainment devices. So far only a couple of issues with Sonos but I do have them set up through the Sonos bridges. I had one instance yesterday where the music skipped but I could stop what I was doing to check what the cause was.
Yet one more eero and google wifi update.
eero is now routinely pushing 170mbps everywhere in my house! This is what I get wired. So, it's working very well. I think eero's "truemesh" update may really take a bit of time to figure out your network. My eeros are all within range of each other. And I think my traffic was originally double hopping to get back and forth. Eventually the eero units figured this out and optimized my traffic into more of a star topology (like orbi always is). And bam, suddenly I have good internet everywhere. That's my theory given I had iffy performance to start with. I'm going to ask eero about it.
Google wifi continues to be stable and reasonably fast. But I haven't seen it get the above speeds. I wouldn't be surprised if it is suffering from the double hop issue and simply does that faster than eero (it's hardware should be significantly faster than eero in raw performance). If true, this will be a better option for my mom's house as it will require a string of devices to cover everything instead of a cluster. It also has stronger antennae's which will also cope with my mom's house better.
On another note, I love wiring one sonos device. Switching between eero and google with a wired Sonos is seemless. Just pop the sonos connect cable into eero or google satellite I want to use and it comes back up. Awesome.
Anyway, unless eero starts biting the dust in weird ways, it's going to win this round. Will keep going!- I just connected to my orbi today and it works great. Only thing I had to do was attach a connect to the orbi router and start a new setup.
The problem isn't the router, it's the satellites. I can't connect some things to the router. I have to wire them to the satellite and it is entirely unstable when I do that.
Not sure if it is related to being a two satellite system. But I believe people with one satellite are having the same issues.
If you try connecting something that uses the internet constantly (streaming, game or other thing like that) the satellite regularly drops connectivity and stays broken for several minutes.
Anyway, eero is winning so far. We'll see if it stays that way.
--Derrek
