SONOS Play:1 and UDLD error

[bluemoon61]

I am having no luck at all connecting a SONOS PLAY:1 to a port of my MS210-BLP

Every port setting I have tried results in a UDLD error on the port and then loops and meltdown and the only state I can recover to means leaving the PLAY:1 off the wired network 

I have a SONOS controller connected to the same switch and following the advice I read here:

https://en.community.sonos.com/troubleshooting-228999/sonos-and-the-spanning-tree-protocol-16973

I have enabled RTSP on the ports connecting to the SONOS CONTROLLER but it does not matter what I set to the PLAY:1 (RTSP ENABLED / DISABLED) still results in a UDLD error 

Any suggestions appreciated ?

[BrechtSchamp]

I have a Play:3 connected to my MS220-8P without issues. It is running at 100Mbps though, which is the max speed of the interface on the Play:3, and I'm pretty sure also on the Play:1. 100Mbps is plenty for music streaming.

How do you have the port configured?

Do you have multiple speakers wired up?

I only have a single one wired up, the rest connect to this one Play 3 over the Sonos proprietary wireless mesh network. I found this to be the best setup.

My switchport has the default configuration:

When you wire up multiple Sonos devices to the same network your Meraki network might detect a loop as I think by default the Sonos builds a L2 bridge between the wired ports of multiple Sonos devices in the same network. In that case you might have to fiddle with the port settings (although I think STP will handle this fine).

[bluemoon61]

This is the basic config I have been trying with my switch with RTSP toggled both on and off and in each case I have seen UDLD errors

I do notice that your port is set to TRUNK where I have been using ACCESS

[PhilipDAth]

If UDLD is kicking in you may also have a cabling issue.  Have you tried patching directly in with a different patch lead?

[bluemoon61]

Thanks for the suggestion - honestly I have swapped cables ad infinitum 

I have actually just realised though that the Play:1 has associated with the home WiFi and works over that with no issue for now so I have pulled the ethernet cable and see what happens  

[trunolimit]

I’m having this issue with a play:5 

I originally had it connected to a net gear switch. When I plugged it in my entire network was brought down. I decided to connect it to my MS in order to get some packet captures but I get the UDLD error.

im thinking it’s an issue with how Sonos implemented its networking. 

[Brons2]

What happens if you set it up as an access port on VLAN1?  I mean I know Meraki tries to make things as easy/foolproof as possible for the most people as possible, and a Trunk port with native VLAN 1 should work for most things.....

....But access on VLAN 1 is the proper setting for pretty much any switch manufacturer that isn't Meraki, if you're not using custom VLANs.  Trunks are normally reserved for links that need to carry multiple VLANs on switch-switch links or switch-firewall, switch-router, etc.

...rant off....

[BrechtSchamp]

That'll probably work too in this case. There would only be a difference in behavior when a tagged packet comes in.

Since this screenshot I've VLAN'd my home network so it's not a trunk anymore now :). But I'm not using VLAN 1.

[m_Andrew]

I see you mention a bit later that these devices are also connected to the network via a wireless interface. I would have suspicions that one or some of the below issues could be in play:

(1) The devices establish independent bridged segments across the LAN over the wired interfaces and wireless interfaces.

(2) On one or both of those segments, certain L2 traffic such as BPDUs, UDLD PDUs, etc., are discarded -- either unidirectionally or bidirectionally. In particular if BPDUs are discarded across a segment, any loop created through that segment will not be detected by spanning tree.

It may even be as simple as the endpoints themselves forming a wireless bridge between one another, and then the wired side of >= 2 endpoints completes the loop into the LAN -- where the wireless segment passes all traffic except for BPDUs.

This can be a bit difficult to detect if any time the problem is introduced, the loop renders the network into a non functional state. However, you may be able to infer the above potential issues if trouble is seen only when both wired and wireless interfaces are active together -- but not when one or the other is inactive.

[Brons2]

I was curious about this, so I did some more reading.

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3235?language=en_US

It appears that you only need *1* Sonos device connected to the wired network and that device will create a separate wireless network just for your other Sonos device(s).

So if you have the controller and the Play:1 both connected to the wired, you may be unintentionally creating a routing loop where the Play:1 is joining both the wired Ethernet from the MS210 and the WiFi network from the controller, which goes back to the MS210.  It sounds like the Play:1 should join the network that the the controller creates.

caveat:  I don't own any of these Sonos devices.

[BrechtSchamp]

I do own Sonos devices and I've experienced the effects of Sonos' wireless bridging first hand.

STP dealt with it without issues. But of course, since an MX doesn't do STP having two or more Sonos' wired to an MX would be a bad idea (haven't tested that).

That said the wireless bridge did take over once when I was testing something and disconnected the uplink of my switch. Took me a while to figure out why everything was still working.

[trunolimit]

I have 1 client that brought in an AV guy who clearly didn’t know anything about networking or WiFi in general. He outfitted a small office building with Sonos and Sonos bridges. Then the system would only sometimes work. This was done without our knowledge. We were called in because the WiFi quality dropped significantly for our customers. We were flabbergasted to say the least. In the middle of New York City WiFi is crowded enough. By adding over a dozen Sonos units you’ve rendered the 2.4ghz range useless. 

so we hardwired everything and that’s when the real fun began. We noticed these things would decide how to network on their own. They would sometimes ignore the Ethernet they were plugged into in favor of the WiFi. We contacted Sonos and asked how to turn off the WiFi and they told us “CUT THE ANTENNA “. This is what their tech told us. 

looks like I have my work cut out for me. 

[trunolimit]

Got it to work. You are correct in that more than one Sonos CAN NOT be hardwired.

what I did was

Step 1: connect 1 sonos hardwired to my switch. Go through the set up process. 

Step 2: Put that sonos on the wifi using the app.

Step 3: Unplug the first sonos Zone and once it switches to the wifi hardwire the second zone.

Step 4: set that up using the app and repeat step 2 and 3 as needed for how ever many zones.

Sonos has its place in the market but for us elevated folk sonos is not very good.

[BrechtSchamp]

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@trunolimit wrote:

Sonos has its place in the market but for us elevated folk sonos is not very good.

---

I don't agree. But that doesn't matter.

It's important to understand that Sonos has two operating modes:

• There's what they call the standard setup which is that all of your speakers are connected to your Wi-Fi. In that case they don't broadcast their own mesh Sonosnet.
• And then there's the wired setup which they also call "boost" setup because you used to need a boost to do it. Sonos automatically switches to this mode when you wire up one of your speakers. My experience is that this mode works best for me as with the standard setup I had hickups in the music from time to time. I understand that this setup may not be for everyone as it does indeed need a 2.4GHz channel specifically for the speakers. But the meshing really works well, I feel it's very robust. They seem to be using some kind of point to point links between the speakers and use STP to avoid loops. It's nice that they provide a (hidden) web page that allows you to see the status of the Sonosnet:
  

This article describes some more things about the two modes and how to verify the mode your system is in:

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3209?language=en_US

It's not all fine and dandy though. I hate that you need to be on the same subnet as your speakers to be able to control them (I haven't fully dedicated myself to try and get a bonjour proxy thing working). They should take a lesson from Meraki's book and allow a cloud connection instead. I have a Logitech Harmony which does this too and it works very well.

Anyways, it's good that you got it working.

[trunolimit]

That’s amazing! I wish I knew about that webpage  a long time ago.

My equipment is the older gen play 5. The one that has the Sonos logo on the bottom bezel. Maybe this gen has a bug that can’t have more than 1 hardwired. The whole experience and all the others I’ve installed have just soured me to the whole product line. Plus I’m kind of spoiled in that I’m an AV installer so I’ve heard what a really good pair of speakers that are way less expensive sound like. But not everyone can run wires so Sonos really is some people’s only solution. 

I do appreciate that they in clubes IR control on the sound bar. 

[BrechtSchamp]

I have one old Play 5, but it's not hardwired so I can't comment on that. What can also cause problems is an older firmware version on the Sonos. When you get it, you never really know what firmware is on it. And since the setup procedure has likely changed over the years, you can run into unexpected behavior there.

I can imagine that there are cheaper better sounding speakers out there. I'm not that knowledgable when it comes to speaker quality. I did opt to stay away from Sonos for my tv surround setup though, I have some Dali speakers for that. But I have a Connect hooked up to my receiver so I can still use it to output Sonos audio.

Also, I bought all my Sonos speakers second hand. Because they are expensive indeed. There's good deals to be had second hand... some people really don't like them or the way they work.

[trunolimit]

Just to close the loop, the issue stems from Sonos building their own Mesh network. If two units are hardwired and they're in close proximity to each other to build a mesh it causes a network loop that sometimes STP doesn't deal with. Sonos does not give you the ability to turn this "feature" off. Hopefully anyone else who lands here searching for a solution to this problem find this helpful.