I got a number of Sonos and have had many problems to find out a pretty big shortcoming of Sonos.
In one room I have an Arc, Sub and other 2 speakers and then in the garden hut I have another speaker. All speaker are connected via WiFi except the ARC. I have tried in all possible ways to let the speker in the garden work: moving routers etc, and nothing worked. Eventually, I unplugged the Arc Ethernet cable and everything worked. The problem is the following:
- Sonos automatically uses their protocol if one device is connected to Ethernet and that device, in my case the Arc functions as a “Sonos router”.
- Once I installed the speker in the garden, I had a lot of problems but eventually it connected, but had no idea it was via the “Sonos network protocol” which I bilieve it is called Boost
- The speker was completely unusable: 50% worked and then 50% not and I did not understand why. IF the Sonos protocol would be working properly, could have easily detected that and switch to Standard Mode using the WiFi network of the device which is fine, but it didn’t!
- I searched in all possible ways to force that only device to use the Wi-Fi network or to force the ARC to use the standard mode via Ethernet, but it seems it is not possible.
Conclusion: I have a 1Gbit ethernet connection behind my ARC, but I cannot use it because if I connect it, my speaker in the garden does not work because Sonos automatically switches to a NOT WORKING boost mode and have NO way to force the speaker in the garden to use standard mode or the ARC to use standard mode via Ethernet.
This is a GREAT SHORTCOMING of sonos and should be changed!!