Client has had a working Sonos system for nearly 5 years. The house was fed with the Comcast gateway plus a Pico WAP at the other end of the house.

Their tech guys were doing some work at their office, and upon mention that the Internet was slow at home, came to the house and installed three Cisco WAPs. They appear to be MR-33 or similar.

Client can web browse all over the house, but cannot access Sonos. The Comcast gateway is still acting as the router, only feeding a POE switch. Sonos says that "the system cannot be found". Just for test, I grabbed a Sonos boost from the truck, in case their old bridge had failed. I plugged in the boost, and could not see it either. I have concluded there must be something crazy going on with the Cisco units.

I am not completely confident of the tech guys, since they left the Comcast radio on. Client can login to it and see his Sonos. You would think it's on a different set of IP addresses, but with only a POE switch, how can it be, and the WAPs still get out to the internet?

His tech guys want me to climb into the attic today so we can hardwire the Sonos amplifiers to their switch. I don't think that is going to fix it, since we still have to go through their Cisco pieces.

Is there some checkbox that they forgot to check, or some config that they did incorrectly with their Wi-Fi set up?

Make sure the Sonos and Cisco are using the same WiFi protocol. If the Cisco are set to work ONLY in 802.11n and the Sonos are set to 802.11b/g, it won't work.

I had the exact same situation happen to me a few months ago. The Cisco Waps in my scenario had Multicast disabled by default. As soon as the IT guys turned on Multicast on all 4 Waps everything worked perfectly.

Good point- I had forgotten about that.

Nope highfigh had it right on the 1st one. They have the WAPs set to 802.11n only for the 2.4GHz. SONOS will ONLY connect to 2.4GHz using the old 802.11g standard. The WAP needs to be set so it is actually compatible with all devices (802.11b/g/n).

I would be willing to bet BIG money this is the problem. It kicked my arse the 1st time I ran into this years ago as well. Took awhile before I discovered SONOS is still using the same wifi chips when they started with 16 years ago. This is one thing that SONOS absolutely cheaps out on and makes no sense why. Just like the stupid wireless printer manufacture and their BS.

Tom, I betting you this is the problem.


On another note:
It is shocking to me how a 'professional' IT person does not understand the logistics in deploying a wireless system that will be compatible with the system of products it is meant to connect to. It's like they have never done a real network before and everytime is the 1st time for them. They have but 1 job to do!!!

I’ve seen this too and enabling multicast on the Cisco WAPs solved the problem.

OK. But he said he can't even see the SONOS on the network. As in it can't connect. The mulicast would just cause the SONOS not to 'work' but you would still see it on the network - correct?

My money is still on the 802.11 standard they set it too.

Correct, if it's a multicasting issue, the computer will still see the hardwired sonos piece. If its multicasting not on, you would be able to setup the Sonos and have it work with a laptop hardwired and any hardwired zones.

Here’s how P2P describes the fix from IP:

Yes, Multicast is on by default for Meraki. The screen shot you show is the right place. It is under 'Wireless --> Firewall & traffic shaping.' Depending on how they set up 'Addressing and traffic' for the APs, client isolation needs to be change. This is what Springs was referring to in Post # 3. If the APs are set to Bridge mode, then what Meraki calls 'Layer 2 LAN isolation' needs to be disabled. This is actually the setting right above the Layer 3 firewall rules that you posted.

So I lost the bet? :(

I had asked the question over at the other site. Using a Bridge, SonosNet is the line of communication between Sonos products not Wi-Fi. So how could Wi-Fi be a factor?

The client device is still connecting through that Wi-Fi which is probably filtering multicast/broadcast traffic from ever hitting your Sonos. That's why it works fine through the still broadcasting Comcast Wi-Fi.

Do you get an IP from the same subnet while on the Meraki Wi-Fi that you get while connected to Comcast directly? They might have setup the Wi-Fi on it's own network as well using built-in DHCP server etc. I don't use Meraki but lots of "enterprise" stuff can do that.

Too many AV companies still create their products as if every network out there is a single broadcast domain. Even commercial AV stuff where they should know better.

You can see this traffic using Wireshark

Frame 106: 356 bytes on wire (2848 bits), 356 bytes captured (2848 bits) on interface 0
Ethernet II, Src: Mellanox_4e:85:80 (00:02:c9:4e:85:80), Dst: IPv4mcast_7f:ff:fa (01:00:5e:7f:ff:fa)
Internet Protocol Version 4, Src: 192.168.0.51, Dst: 239.255.255.250
User Datagram Protocol, Src Port: 1901, Dst Port: 1900
Simple Service Discovery Protocol