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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 ha...
I finally got around to buying orbi again from costco (my local warehouse had it in stock). I like google wifi, but a few things really sold me on trying orbi again:
1) The backhaul. This eliminates all congestion for busy networks.
2) It has 4 ports on every unit (removes the need for mini switches everywhere saving complexity and cost).
3) Star topology. In my case this is a strength, not a weakness. No matter where I am in my house my networking is exactly the same everywhere. No hop penalties or shared backhaul issues.
4) Not so cloud focused that it can't run without the cloud. Meaning local network stays functional even if my internet dies. Yay.
The good news is I have not had internet this stable in months. So far, no sonos issues, no weird other networking issues and no fussing with the units (outside of having to do the manual firmware upgrade).
I believe I had a faulty unit last time. The setup and update process was much much smoother. It came up so fast on the latest firmware that I thought it didn't do the update.
I've only been running it for a day or two. If it stays this way, I'm pretty happy. Orbi for the win.
FYI: I was going to try Velop from linksys, but since the backhaul is inferior, I decided not to.
For me, orbi is worth the premium over Google Wifi (for 3 units). But if I weren't such a demanding user, Google Wifi would be the winner. It is still running superbly at my mom's house. Now when I go there I have internet everywhere. very good. And I manage it for her from here (even turning off the kid's internet access when they visit).
I hope everyone else got their issues resolved.
--Derrek
Hey Derrek,
I have installed Orbi's for freinds and familys in a couple homes with no issues and have loved the powerful backhaul and I still think it's the best consumer grade mesh system avalible, despite the mesh systems popularity rising. I am an IT engineer by trade so troubleshooting is usually pretty simple for me.
My issue is this, and this is how I found your thread. Today I was working on setting up Orbi with Sonos. Everything seemed to be working fine, but trying to setup the Sonos wirelessly with Orbi (Plug in to Orbi temp till it gets creds then remove) everytime I would remove the Sonos bridge from Orbi the Sono would lose connection to the network and make me try and setup Sonos wireless all over again.
So, having little expereicne with Sonos, I decided to just wire in one of the Sonos receivers directly into the Router portion of Orbi and leave it plugged in. Sonos had no issues then, no dropping, stable sound throughout the home. Well then I speedtested back where the satelite was.... which had changed its color to amber which means fair connection between the router and satelite, and now was only pulling 1-25 mb/s of the previous 125 it should have been pulling before Sonos was setup.
I could replicate it that Sonos was indeed interferring with Orbi. Now I am trying to determine if they are truly incomatible, or can be tweaked to work together and that is what I am trying to determine from the feed.
The Router and The Satelite are on the latest firmware as of Today. I will try changing the channels this week (Saw that as a possible fix on this thread) to see if it alleviates the issues, but I have little hope.
In your last post it seems you have Orbi and Sonos working fine now? I do not completely understand the point of the Sonos bridge (I do not personally own a Sonos system) and if it is the only device causing the interference. It is not the "boost" just the bridge.
Sonos can introduce a number of issues to mesh networking devices. (Technically Orbi is not a "mesh" network, but the same issues apply because of the multiple physical units)
The bridge and boost serve essentially the same purpose, a purpose that was rendered unnecessary by updates to Sonos speakers. In the past, you needed a "base" for all the Sonos speakers to communicate. At some point Sonos enabled connecting directly to your own wifi network in which you plugin the ethernet cable, setup wifi and then unplug the speaker. If this doesn't work, you may have some speakers setup as one sonos network and others as another. I had a brief period where my speakers behaved as two independent Sonos speaker networks. Not sure how or why, but it was temporary as I was re-setting all network stuff.
Some caveats: If any single Sonos device is plugged in via ethernet, all sonos devices will prefer their own wireless network. I would avoid plugging in more than one device via ethernet. This likely creates the networking problems for mesh systems because it is unclear how protocols it uses should behave on a mesh network and each vendor behaves differently.
I only have two Sonos devices: A connect to play through my existing home theater system. I wired this to one of the Orbi's as they sit right next to each other. The other one (a play:1) connects over the built-in sonosnet created by the connect. This has worked essentially flawlessly on my replacement Orbi. No bridge, no boost, nothing else.
This all assumes you are on Sonos 7.1 (or whatever the latest released firmware).
Option 1: If one of the speakers (not bridge) is near the Orbi, use that one to plug-in to the Orbi and *only* that one. Then setup all speakers elsewhere and leave the bridge out of the picture (not needed). Finally, make sure the Sonosnet channel is opposite the 2.4ghz channel used by Orbi. I put Sonos on channel 11 because 1 was being used by Orbi (I believe that is Orbi's default). Easily done in Sonos app.
Option 2: If no speaker is near an Orbi, then put the bridge near the orbi, plug it in via ethernet, and only it (no other speakers via ethernet). Again, make sure the Sonos channel is opposite Orbi.
Option 3: The final option is to connect *all* speakers through Orbi wifi only. All Sonos devices must remain on wifi only and not wired. If anything is wired, it will flip to SonosNet usage. This works great at my mom's house where google wifi blankets the house in solid wifi and no Sonos device is near a wifi mesh point. But the SonosNet will often work better with interference.
The only reason Sonosnet wouldn't work is if the distances are too large for it to handle. This would be mansion size house like 10,000+ square feet between Sonos devices. This is where the Boost would become useful (the bridge could be used in this case as well). It is unlikely your own wifi will do better than sonosnet with boost/bridge devices.
The only downside to this (and what triggered me returning my first orbi) is if the satellite that the single wired Sonos is connected to starts misbehaving, all Sonos speakers will stop working. The wi-fi way, sometimes only the units connected to that satellite would stop. They might even switch to a functional satellite wifi signal.
I have not seen any of these issues in any Sonos configuration on the new Orbi. It's been working wonderfully daily.
--DerrekThanks everyone for the replies.
I was experiencing these issues with the Orbi speed when I had the non-bridge plugged in. In the house there was a "bridge unit" and then each speaker had its own white receiver box? Am I understanding this right? They had multiple Connect amp receivers, that is what I plugged the Orbi router portion into and expereinced the signal drops and speed issues even when it was left plugged in. I am unsure if this is the "Sonosnet setup". I also experience the speed drops when I wired in the wireless bridge to the orbi router portion.
Disclaimer, this sonos setup was supposedly setup by a professional awhile ago, but there are so many connect amps, that I am confused what they are all for.
Anyways, I can clearly replicate the problem by hooking up the sonos to the Orbi router portion. Then when I remove the sonos amp portion, and restart Orbi, the speed goes back up and the satelite does not get a amber "fair connection" light.
The Orbi firmware is up to date, and I never wired more than 1 Sonos unit into the Router portion of Orbi.
So my problem really can only be 3 things from what I am hearing from you guys.
- The Sonos Firmware is not update (didn't even think to check that)
- The Channels are interfereing and I need to set Orbi to 11 and Sonos to 1
- I have a defective Orbi unit, which I just feel is highly unliekly as it works flawlessly without Sonos involved.
Or maybe I need to purchase one of the new "Boost Units" and set it up that way? I don't understand how the bridge is different from it though.
I am not limited to any specific sort of "Wireless only" setup, I could find a way to wire any sonos piece to ethernet because the house is wired with network drops.
Sorry, I am not sure what is happening in your setup. I can explain my setup.
I have one Sonos bridge which connected to my switch with ethernet cable on the ground floor. This bridge is sending wifi signal in whole house. So when I setup new speaker, it connects to this bridge via wifi but on its own channel to the bridge. I hope this make any sense?
Dynamiteboy I have 9 Sonos components working flawlessly with Orbi. I would recommend you DO NOT connect the Sonos components to WiFi. I would instead use the "sonosnet" configuration. This is what Derrek described.
Just plug one, and only one, Sonos component into the router, or into any hardired connection on the LAN. Sonos will setup it's own invisible mesh network on 2.4 Ghz. You can choose the channel space (1, 6, or 11) via the Sonos Controller App. You need to make sure Orbi and Sonos use different channel spaces. If Orbi uses 40 MHz on the 2.4 band you will only have two choices... Put the orbi on Channel 1 and Sonos on channel 11, or vice versa. I have Orbi on 1 and Sonos on 11.
Once it's setup, Sonos will dynamically compute routes through the mesh network so that all components are connected, even if you move comonents. For the mesh to work, the Sonos components have to be close enough to establish a path, but they have decent range.
The Bridge simply functions as an additional node on the mesh network. The bridge can be the ONE Sonos unit hardwired to the LAN. Or, if another coponent is hardwired, one or more bridges can be plugged into an AC outlet anywhere to provide more nodes in the mesh network, for additional coverage. You can also plug wired devices into the Bridge to give them access to the LAN. I have two bridges in use--one at the router, and another on the other end of the house.
I am using Sonos bridge which is set on channel 11 and I have got two Sonos speakers on wifi. I never had any issues on Orbi network with Sonos.