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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...
We have 4 Sonos units currently connected to our Orbi system and everything is working great. Please note, however, that I use Cat 6 ethernet connections to the Sonos units, always have, just to eliminate any of the vagaries associated with wifi. I have not tested them in wifi mode. I connected a switch to one of the ethernet LAN ports on the Orbi router, and have cat6 runs to the Sonos units. Same for other devices in home theater.
We are getting great wifi coverage all over 3,000 sqaure feet on 2 levels with the 2 unit RBK50 (router at one end of first floor, satellite near middle of 2nd floor), and pretty good coverage in our basement as well.
Please note some have had difficulties with Apple and Nest products. We have Apple laptops connected wirelessly with no issues, but we keep OS X at current version, and there have been wifi issues with older versions of OS X with non-Airport routers. Nest product forums show lots of wifi issues with many routers, especially older Nest products. The more IoT products you have connected via wifi, the more research you will want to do about compatibility issues.
Also, from what I can tell, some of the rants about issues with Orbi (on other discussions on forum) come from people who have connected the Orbi router to a cable co provided router. Why they want to keep the cable co router I don't know, but I suspect many of these problems could be avoided by replacing the cable co modem/router combo with a simple cable modem, and using the Orbi as the router, as intended. We are using an Arris SB 6190 as our cable modem, and it has been a champ.
FYI, the Orbi system is replacing an Apple Airport Extreme router on first floor, which was connected via Cat 5 ethernet to a 2nd Apple Airport Extreme router (in "roaming mode" as recommended by Apple) on the 2nd floor. This combo gave us excellent coverage on first floor, but weak wifi in a remote home office on 2nd floor. The Orbi system gives us great wifi all over, despite the current lack of ethernet-connected backhaul for the satellite. The dedicated backhaul channel seems to work very well for us. We usuallly get close to our service level of 150mbs all over the house via wifi.