Orbi RBR50 and Sonos Playbar

[Josh_Manton]

I have tried to use one of the ethernet ports on the back of the RBR50 satellite unit to the Sonos Playbar and it brought down the satellite unit (lost its connection to the base). The base router was no longer able to sync with the satellite. The satellite was not getting an IP. Not until I unplugged the satellite it from the Sonos Playbar did everything function normal again.

I am back to using the Playbar over wifi which works great.

Has anyone had this problem?

[DarrenM]

Have you tried to connect it to the main router see if it behaves the same way? or maybe assigning the device a static Ip before plugging it back in.

DarrenM

[st_shaw]

I have a Sonos playbar wired into an Orbi Router operating in Access Point mode.  No issues.

I don't know how your Sonos is setup.  You can run in the "Boost" mode or the "Standard" mode.  Standard mode connects to your WiFi and you should not wire any Sonos devices.

Boost mode creates it's own 2.4 GHz mesh network and you must wire only ONE Sonos device, or you will cause problems.

Also, make sure you separate the Orbi and Playbar by a few feet at least.  They both have 2.4G radios and they will interfere.

[Josh_Manton]

I did not try to plug it into the main router. It works fine over wifi. It may be due to the amount of multitasking traffic created by the Sonos product. I'm really just alerting Netgear so they can look into it.

[st_shaw]

Did you convert your entire Sonos system from Standard (WiFi) mode to Boost mode prior to plugging the Playbar into the Satellite?

In Standard (WiFi) mode the Ethernet ports on Sonos are supposed to be disabled, so there would be no Ethernet traffic on the wired port.

[Josh_Manton]

Yes I did convert that playbar to ethernet. Things were working fine and then the satellite went down. I could not bring it back up again and it would glow magenta. I tried to factory reset it and still could not get the main router to recognize it. At which time I decided to unplug the Sonos Playbar from the ethernet port and everything started working again.

Does anyone have a setup where the satellite is connected to a sonos product?

[st_shaw]

How close was the playbar to the Orbi satellite?

Do you have more than one Sonos product, or just the Playbar?

I can tell you for certain that Sonos speakers and the Orbi will interfere if you place them too close together. I've seen it happen in my house. I keep them 8-10' apart.

[Josh_Manton]

Thank you for your response. The satellite is the same distance from the Playbar when it was wired and wireless. Also, I'm sure the Playbar is 100% shielded or it would mess up your television if mounted under.

I'm good with the wireless solution. But, if anyone had the satellite connected to the Playbar via wired Ethernet successfully please let me know.

Thanks!

[st_shaw]

The playbar is certainly not 100% shielded, because it contains a 2.4GHz radio, used for WiFi and Sonosnet, and a 5 GHz radio used for surround-sound inter-speaker links.

According to Sonos, once you plug one speaker into Ethernet it converts your entire Sonos system to a Boost setup.  That means the playbar will start broadcasting it's own separate proprietary network on 2.4 Ghz. That network is uncoordinated with Orbi and it can interfere with Orbi. When Sonos is set to use Wifi, i.e not plugged into your satellite, Sonos connects to the satellite as a client, so they cannot interfere.

To avoid interference in (wired) Boost mode, you need to make sure Orbi and Sonos are using non-overlapping wifi channels.  This is done under the Advanced Settings menu in the Sonos controller.  Because Orbi uses 40 Mhz channels on 2.4Ghz, you must set Sonos on channel 11 and Orbi on channel 1, or vice versa.

I hope this helps explain what you are seeing, and why things are very different plugged-in and not plugged-in.

[Josh_Manton]

This may help. I will give it a test. The only thing that I don't understand is why the satellite and base would not just negotiate a clear channel. This should just work for a non-technical user. Also note that I now have the base router pulgged into another Sonos PlayBar with zero configuration need. I did not need to switch any channels. 

[st_shaw]

Sonos will try to channel hop, but it's always better to manage the channels yourself.

As I wrote above, you should only plug ONE Sonos component into Ethernet. It would be incorrect to plug in the second playbar if one Sonos playbar was already wired. This could create a network loop, which can crash the network.