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.

Could be wrong but i believe I read somewhere that Netgear routers don't support STP.

Ah, yep. I had this issue when I got my orbi. Current manufactured shipping units are not shipping with the current firmware. Worse than that, auto updates don't work on satellites with earlier firmwares (that's something that is fixed in a later firmware. So this process below should only need to be done once.).To fix this you have to download the latest satellite firmware from netgear manually. should be here: https://www.netgear.com/support/product/RBK50?cid=wmt_netgear_organic#RBS50%20(Orbi%20Satellite)%20Firmware%20Version%201.4.0.16 . You need to extract the image file out of the zip you download.Then you need to connect to the satellite ip directly. You can find that on your orbi router home page under "attached devices". It should be under connected satellites.Go to that ip directly in the browser and it will ask for orbi username and password. Same as the main one.You can then use "firmware update" from the menu and select the image file extracted from the zip. This took several tries on one of my satellites complaining the process timed out.Once you do all of this and it (finally) succeeds, it should be up to date and working. I would not be surprised if Sonos starts working after that. (I would also unplug power, leave out for 10 seconds and plug everything back in on All Orbi and Sonos units.On the sonos front, when I swapped to the new wifi network, I had to re-add those speakers by plugging them in via ethernet and re-add them / run the wifi setup wizard again. It was really frustrating. Then I had to unplug them, move them back to their original location and they joined the orbi network fine after that.I have still not had any issues with Sonos all day with just wifi.

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.

Any new info on this? I just hooked up my Orbi and having frequent droupouts on my Sonos now.

My Sonos keeps dropping out as well. Did you end up finding a solution? Help would be very much appreciated.

SONOS Compatability with Orbi | NETGEAR Communities

148 Replies

Antipodeansam7
Apprentice
Jun 06, 2017
Hey guys, so similar issue that I assume is related. Have latest firmware on my Orbi and satellite, everything runs great at about 180mps throughout my house. Sonos never drops out, except; whenever I play music using my surround sound setup (may also happen with tv sound but don't notice) the stereo pair drop out briefly every couple of minutes and then come back in, however playbar continues to play.

Currently I have bridge wired into my router, Orbi on channel 1 for 2.4 and sonos on 11. Previously I had one of the stereo pair plugged into satellite as they are right next to each other instead of using the bridge but this was as bad if not worse.

So any ideas what the issue may be? Would the satellite being next door to one of the stereo pair be an issue? (Haven't moved as have number of things on that shelf plugged into it).
- MachineLearner
  Apprentice
  Jun 06, 2017
  I believe Sonos recommends trying to keep some distance between wifi-connected Sonos units and the WAP to which they are connected.
- st_shaw
  Master
  Jun 06, 2017
  Antipodeansam7 wrote:
  
  So any ideas what the issue may be? Would the satellite being next door to one of the stereo pair be an issue? (Haven't moved as have number of things on that shelf plugged into it).
  Yes, it could be an issue. Sonos uses 5 GHz for stereo pairing and Orbi uses 5 GHz for the backhaul. I have seen Sonos interfere with the backhaul and have measured reduce throughput. Try moving the Satelitte farther away from the Sonos stereo pair.
  - dleute
    Apprentice
    Jun 06, 2017
    I can tell you that Sonos was not working well for a while with it's internal sonosnet. It would drop several times a song. I just stopped using it for a few weeks. Eventually I switched it to use the Orbi network and things got much much better. I'm not sure how a stereo pair or surround sound would interact with that.
MachineLearner
Apprentice
Jun 06, 2017
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.

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SONOS Compatability with Orbi