I have just upgraded my Router to the XR500 Nighthawk Gaming Router.
The only major barrier I have come up against is the connection to my collection of Sonos wireless speakers (Sonos Play:1's & a Playbar). Normally to change the network setup for these speakers it involves plugging them firstly in via the LAN, then doing a configuration to the new network.
The speakers are visible when on the LAN, and I try to complete the process, however when it comes to the step of them talking to the wifi the Sonos app gives me an error message saying there is no compatible network available. I have read another forum post suggesting this router is just incompatible with Sonos speakers. Is this truly the case? I kind of expect the latest premium router to connect to quite common premium wifi speakers???
Any guidance people could provide would be great. If the router is truly incompatible then this is a deal breaker for me, and I'll need to return.
I shouldn't think they're incompatible. The likely cause is the smart connect feature. Disable that so you have individual 2.4Ghz & 5Ghz SSIDs and then connect it to one of these and see if that resolves the issue.
I have a B&W Zeppelin Wireless and a Sony HTNT5 soundbar, both connect just fine. There is no reason Sonos should not connect. I would follow Frasers advice, also use 2.4Ghz not 5Ghz as wireless speakers dont need much bandwidth and 2.4Ghz travels much further. If you have recent upgraded firmware and this continues may I suggest a factory rest and set up again, not using a backup, as that may cure your issue too.
Turned off the smart connect and created separate names for the two bands. Tried setup on the 2.4ghz channel however same issue as last time. Comes up on LAN but falls over on WiFi.
Also did factory reset, and setup router from scratch. Again came to the same failed screen on sonos app.
I have a few ideas, untick IGMP Proxying in WAN Setup and disable SIP ALG. It may also be that SONOS does not support beamforming and mu-mimo so I would experiment with disabling these in Settings > Advanced Settings > Advanced Wireless.
Sadly it may be a case of the router does not support Sonos equipment. The R7800 is not supprted and since the XR500 uses the same SoC, switch etc and apart from the extra Flash (NAND) at 256MB compared with the R7800's 128 Flash (NAND) It's identicle even down to the same 512MB DDR3 RAM so I would imagine its not supported too. Looking at the supported routers or unsupported is the better bet as there are quite a few as even BT's Whole Home Mesh routers has issues with Sonos, so I would say buying a router known to be supported by Sonos is the best bet really.
Tried the IGMP proxying & SIP ALG suggestions... however still same response.
I had been using those sonos guides previously to try & troubleshoot. I'm getting very close to giving up and returning the router. It sounds like it could just be incompatible.
Happy to try any further ideas people could have (including throwing router out the window!)
Yes, that is the article I had seen, and was concerned about.
I'll give it a couple more days to see if anyone has further info/workarounds... otherwise INCOMPATIBLE will be the conclusion. Not that I understand the technicalities of why!
"When the router is used on an ISP that requires VLAN tagging (e.g. Telekom in Germany) the controller simply cannot access the Sonos system via WiFi. The way the controller communicates with Sonos (multicast/broadcast/UDP) is being dropped by the router - actually just such an extremely slow throughput such that it doesn't work."
I would contact Sonos directly via whatever means is best for support and also Netgear support directly too if you are within your 90 days grace period which I am assuming you are. However since the R7800 is not compatible neither will the XR500 as they both run the same hardware as I mentioned and use similar base firmware from Netgear. Its just that the XR500 has DumaOS as well.
Always talk to support for the router manufacturer as well as the company you are having issues with whenever possible, in this case Sonos. As then you will get the definitive answers you need, as the chance of someone coming along with Sonos hardware and an XR500/R7800 may not be likely in the time frame you have to return your router. Good luck.
We have 5 Sonos speakers in our home and we are also using the xr500 with zero issues. I would try the wireless setup in the sonos app under advanced settings.
Try to configure your 2.4GHz channel on XR500 as fixed CH1/6/11, Settings->Wireless Setup->Wireless Network (2.4GHz b/g/n)->Channel
Also try to change Mode between "Up to 54Mbps", "Up to 347Mbps" and "Up to 800Mbps".
Seems Sonos has interoperability on this 2.4GHz channels for its data rate and bandwidth. Above is try to figure out what might be wrong for XR500 with Sonos, once identified the root cause, more easier to come out proper solution.
Had this or simmilar issue today. When the 2.4 & 5 network are "same" with all the bells and whistles MU-MIMO etc. Sonos would not connect to the 2.4 network.
So what I did was enabled Guest Network (Only 2.4), created XYZ Network, enabled local share, added WPA2 password and connected my sonos with no issues immidiatly.
I'm not sure how much help I could potenitally offer here, but I have an XR500 and Sonos Ones's and Play:1's and all are working on my router. At first it didnt and it turned out to be modem issues. I am also using VLAN tagging and it works.
My current setup is Netgear DM200 in modem only with VLAN passthrough. Then in the settings of the XR500, I have VLAN tagging set to be 101 (which I believe is the default for the UK, but also what my ISP requires).
Without VLAN passthrough and the LATEST firmware on the DM200, it wouldnt work! I spent a few hours on to Netgear phone support to sort this out. On earlier versions of the DM200 firmware, for some reason VLAN tagging wasnt working and it was like my Sonos or my Nest thermostat for that matter, couldnt get an upload connection.
