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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...
Rugby49,
If one of your bridges is plugged into the Orbi router, you may be dodging the issue. My issue is all speakers are either wifi or wired on one of the Orbi satellites. Neither satellite produced stable signal (though one worked better than the other one seemingly). So, whichever satellite was the wired source of sonosnet still needs to be stable. So, in my case, a bridge would not help. However, plugging in a speaker or bridge into the Orbi router instead of satellite, it may have fixed the issue in terms of sonos. The signal would have originated at the router and been stable. As far as I could tell, the router had no issues.
Doing that with sonos would not have fixed the issue for all other devices experiencing the issues. Hence why I gave up and returned it. Once I realized it wasn't sonos specific, it's a pretty massive flaw. It may still be that Sonos somehow triggers the issue, but I don't care. My airport extreme works better than orbi everywhere in my house. No point in spending more money that doesn't give me better internet in all rooms.
FYI: Sonos works fantastic purely on wifi with my airport extreme. Nothing is wired. Sonosnet settings are not available because of that. I would like to use Sonosnet, but, for me, it requires a mesh network that can get a wired port in a different room from the router. When I get another speaker for my office, that could be the source of the sonos net plugged into the router, just not currently. In a way I'm glad. I may not have found the networking issues early enough to reasonably return the orbi.
--Derrek
Having some issues primarily with Entertainment devices not maintaining a stable signal or dropping signals completely. Primarily TV, Roku, Xbox One S and PS4. Tablets, computers and phones connect without a problem. And I do have my Sonos setup through the bridges, nothing else connected to it. When I test the Wifi signal throughout the house on phone or computer it is solid. Not sure why the other Entertainment devices would be having a problem. Will try the powerline networking later today.
That was the primary thing I saw. Basically anything that needs a constant connection to work in order to stream data was unstable. Games, movies, video conferencing, sonos. But things that "wake up" use internet for a bit and than stop (phones, laptops while browsing, etc) tended to miss the connectivity issues. So it seemed to be stable for them. (it wasn't).
Also, it was rare for wifi on both satellites to be dead at the same time. So devices that could move easily did. But devices that don't roam well or needed a solid connection would still have issues. Many of the devices that had the biggest difficulty were wired to one of the satellites so they had no other choice but to wait for the satellite to return.
Anyway, I'm an advocate of returning. Makes companies fix issues faster as it costs someone something. Either stores won't carry products with high return rates or the manufacturer has to absorb that.
You can always buy it again.
--DerrekInteresting. I never really thought that much about the systems requiring a constant connection, but they are the ones having problems for me. My Sonos setup was purchased when you needed the bridges so I always had the bridges setup. So they are hard wired into the router and not the satellite. All the devices for me having a problem would be running off the satellite wifi. I guess I do not need to buy an additional satellite for $260 as the problem would still exist. My pre Orbi setup was an Asus AC88U with a Netgear extender but I had the entertainment devices hooked up using a 4 port powerline setup and that provided a stable network. I am past my return date for Orbi so I will hope for a fix and see what happens. Will definitely setup the powerline today to see if I can get stable connections.