I have a nearly two year old system with 9 SONOS players wired directly to ports on a 48 port Ubiquiti EdgeMax switch. The Network also supports 4x Ubiquiti Access points [3x AP-Pros and 1x Outdoor], a bunch of wired Apple TV's, Blu-rays, PS4's, etc. and DirecTV Genie. The system worked well for more than a year but has [apparently] now developed debilitating broadcast storm problems. Nothing changed from the initial system commissioning, aside from SONOS updates, whatever changes AT&T may have made to their modem/router hardware and a modem swap by AT$T several months ago which did not initially cause any notable instability.

Eventually, the network became unstable and unreliable, though a router reboot usually cleared the problems. We inevitably concluded that the AT&T DSL Modem/Router was the likely culprit since the particular model Arris AT&T deployed 8 months ago as a replacement for the original ended up listed on SONOS' known incompatibility list. As such, the client ditched AT$T and we switched to a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite and Arris SB6190 modem yesterday morning.

The network tested and functioned perfectly for the 5 hours we were onsite...Time Warner levels and line conditions were perfect, SONOS Diagnostics were confirmed by SONOS to show happiness by all devices.

At 11 pm the network went down and began displaying no internet access. It's still on and off this morning. TWC reports no problems with the modem...

When speaking with SONOS tech support yesterday, the agent initially expressed concern that the Ubiquiti Switch was listed as Root Bridge for STP. He checked with someone else higher up the chain who said this was not a problem on Ubiquiti switches and as long as either the switch or a SONOS player was root bridge, STP would work, though there was concern that at some point in the future after a reboot, a WAP or DirecTV node could takeover as root bridge, thereby causing storm or other performance problems.

SONOS also re-confirmed that their product does work with Ubiquiti managed switches, when properly configured. Unfortunately, they can only provide switch setup specifics for Cisco managed switches, which do not comport with Ubiquiti.

Has anyone experienced these issues with SONOS/Ubiquiti combos? Can anyone share specific STP setup information for an EdgeMax switch that is known good with multiple wired SONOS units? Does anyone know how to force a particular device as root bridge on an STP-enabled network? So far, none of the networking experts I've spoken to can answer the question.

TIA

If you only have wired players have you tired shutting of the WiFi in them.

Another question: what are the STP settings in the switch?

Frederick

Try taking the DirecTV out of the loop

We had DTV install on a site last week, the DECA adaptor would kill the network, remove and all was well

The SONOS experts will say to only have one wired SONOS player and to turn off wifi in all the SONOS players. I can say that in my early SONOS days, I used to plug in every SONOS player I could to ethernet. Some of those systems are still running fine to this day. It might just depend on the network hardware, etc.

But I will say that I also have seen DirecTV network issues that killed entire networks. Usually a reboot of all the DirecTV stuff would fix it. Start there.

What version of the STP protocol are you using in your Ubiquiti switch? If it is set to RSTP change it to classic spanning tree (802.1D). I have experienced the exact scenario you are describing with nearly identical equipment.

I don't know your specific network topology but I would assume you would want your switch to be the root bridge as it is likely directly connected to your router. The root bridge should lay closest to the destination (router in your case) in order to provide the least amount of hops for data to travel. You can force the switch to be root bridge.

Aha! Switch is currently set to 802.11s.

Since you may be my saving grace, do you recall how to force the switch to always be root bridge? No one I've spoken to can answer that question. That assignment seems WAY too arbitrary...

I would also set the priority for the Ubiquiti switch to 0 or 4096 in the STP configuation. This will ensure it is the root bridge. Sonos priorities default to 32768

Setting the priority to a lower number ( 0 or 4096) will force the device to be root. If a matching priority number exists the MAC address is used to determine root. I don't have a switch in stock to see exactly where it is but I remember it being relatively easy to find. You will be looking for bridge priority

Yes had this exact same issue with a much smaller system. The switch in question was the TS-5-POE. We picked up a netgear locally and everything worked fine.

My personal system has a unifi switch in it and i have sonos with no issues at all.

I do have another system with several connect amps and speakers etc... using an edge router poe with no issues whatsoever.

I'm not going to say the problem is definitively solved [knocking wood as I type], but I finally got a high level SONOS networking tech on the phone and he believes that the EdgeMax's STP protocol setting was the issue, EVEN THOUGH, all STP protocols are supposed to be fully backward compatible with the original IEEE802.1D / "Classic STP" mode that SONOS uses and prescribes...So, in actuality, there may be a firmware issue with Ubiquiti's STP implementation of later standards.

SONOS also confirmed AZCS's assertion that setting STP Priority to a value at or below 4000 would ensure that it gets assigned as Root Bridge.

One POSSIBLY exacerbating factor that was causing the network to frequently re-scan and re-build the spanning tree: There was an Ethernet-attached DirecTV Genie that had originally been setup with its wireless adapter active because of [then] ongoing issues with the Genie when connected by Ethernet only. I posit that the continuously failed Wi-Fi connection attempts by the Genie were causing it to alert the Root Bridge as a Spanning Tree topology change, which forced a tree refresh, which then caused a broadcast storm of BDPU's due to the problematic STP protocol setting.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. What I cannot explain is why the system worked for more than a year without catastrophic and frequent crashes. Firmware updates in any of the networked devices [SONOS and DirecTV most especially] may be to blame.

Now let's see if I get any more angry texts...Thanks to all for the useful feedback!

This was brilliant. A rare technical read on this site anymore. Legit entertained...I'm a nerd

You have a managed Ubiquiti switch but are using the provided AT&T modem as the router? The first thing I would do is put that thing in bridge mode and get a real router..

That said, I have never had a SONOS issue on any of my Ubiquiti networks including my one at home.

The AT&T modem/routers in our market cannot be bridged...We've tried every way around that reality possible with no stable success. As explained, the client was finally able to get TWC service, so now we're running an EdgeRouter Lite with an Arris Modem [no internal router].