Hi

Have done a search but nothing conclusive.

I have John Lewis broadband, basically plusnet but the jl deal was better at the time. Broadband has been pretty reliable compared to previous suppliers.

Have got their new zyxel modem/ router as the old one broke. It’s rubbish at wifi. No signal in the office room upstairs, poor signal on 2.4g band and no signal in back garden/ garage. Not a massive house but an old house and the router has to be sited under the stairs (where I’d hide if we were being bombed probably).

Wife and I are working from home. Lots of teams calls. I’ve also got a Sonos system running the old Sonos 1 app. It’s connected via the Sonos mesh and works fine.

The broadband speeds are fine coming into the house but troublesome when broadcast via wifi.

Am thinking of a mesh system with one unit downstairs and one upstairs near the office. The office is near to the problematic Back garden deck area.

Are there issues with mesh systems and the plusnet broadband service? I’m only getting 40 mbps speed, that’s all the local system provides and it used to be reasonably reliable with the old router but we used a range extender in the back office.

Any ideas?

I have Virgin and plug a mesh Wi-Fi into that (Orbi). The only link between the mesh and the Virgin router is an ethernet cable running between the two. I turn off all the Virgin Media Wi-Fi and just use the Mesh WiFi. I don’t run it in router mode, but it all works seamlessly. The Sonos boxes we have in the house (two Ones) easily connected to the Mesh Wi-Fi. The only hassle was going round and changing all the devices to the new network. It is now you realise just how many devices you have connected!

The Orbi is great – I get the broadband speed across the Wi-Fi at my laptop, I get 200 Mbit/sec which use the base unit and the satellite – and our speed is 200 Mbit network connection. It easily covers the smallish garden that we have. Other mesh solutions are available.

There’s a quick fix to changing the device settings – just change the original router Wi-Fi network name to something else and then set up the new mesh system to the “old” network name and password. All of the devices should reconnect automatically.

We have plusnet and google mesh wifi, and have no problems at all. We don’t have Sonos, so I can’t comment on that front.

Other mesh systems exist but we also have an orbi and it just works. Although putting in some cables in some places for PoE but that’s a very different use case.

Sonos (many devices) happily coexist. We just have one device plugged into one switch and they run themselves.

Changing your password every now and then isn’t a bad thing anyway.

BT mesh works fine with our Sonos on the fat part of the house. Running system 1.

Ah ha,good thread timing,our Google WiFi gadgets arrived today to boost our signal up to the attic,so just preparing to kill our internet* 🙂 .

sadmadalan

I have not looked at the router settings or had any dealings with Virgin for ages ,was it easy enough to switch their router (hub 3)to modem only?

Cheers

*Not sure if I should be attempting this on a Sunday before a load of teams meetings planned for tomorrow

Have BT hub (wireless and DHCP disabled), TPlink mesh system, loads of devices streaming and a couple of Sonos speakers and it all works perfectly here.

You’ll probably need a few more of the mesh units than you originally think. Depends on your walls, but they need a decent WiFi connection between them (unless you get into wired backhaul). In our old cottage with thick walls, we started with a 2 pack and bought 2 more to get full coverage. But once working it’s been faultless.

Oh, and you could just use the same SSID and password as the old hub to save you having to change every device.

Virgin fibre 100mb + two Tenda MW6 + Sonos play ones = much better than just Virgin.

Coverage all over the house (60s 4 bed) & garden.

+1 for using the original SSID + PW

Virgin hub settings are easy to access via the router login (address, username & PW should be on the router itself if you’re not sure & haven’t changed them before)

Must admit, I’ve been having a few issues with Sonos and google wifi since the Sonos 2 app came out. Only really occurs when trying to share our Beam to other speakers. Lots of drop out on the other speakers to the point it just isn’t worth sharing. Don’t get the same issue when sharing in app content (Spotify, music library, whatever), just when sharing external content (TV) through the Beam. Need to find some office hours time to get Sonos to help on it.

I also found that the Sonos app on our phones sometimes struggles to find the Sonos system since installing google wifi. I expect there is an interference problem between Sonos and Google wifi. I’ve tried changing the Sonos channel but it still happens occasionally.

Must admit, I’ve been having a few issues with Sonos and google wifi…

Some ideas here. Think is basically says check you’ve turned off your old hub WiFi/DHCP, and if anything is wired, connected to the Google stuff rather than the old hub.

https://en.community.sonos.com/troubleshooting-228999/sonos-and-google-wifi-6798278

Think is basically says check you’ve turned off your old hub

Yup, I switched off the router (Virgin hub3 ) and Google took over,instant stronger WiFi to the top of the house.

All working fine.

I was in the same situation over the summer – plusnet, poor wifi, older sonos.

I did this

1) bought a BT homehub (5?) off ebay for £25 – apparently these are better than the plusnet one.

2) bought a 3 unit mesh wireless network (TP Link deco 5).

the tp link has transformed wifi – we’re now getting good speeds throughout the house and even in the garden (where I’m typing this from) with 3 of us online full time – citirix, video conferencing and video streaming. you cna also get nifty cradle for the deco so they can be mounted straight onto a wall socket.

The only issue is if you want your other ethernet devices need to be visible to the mesh network – you can’t plug them into the router, so I bought a netgear 4 port switch, plugged that into one of the deco’s and that solved things.

If I was doing it again I’d buy the deco and install it before buying a BT router.

@fasthaggis – I left the VM Superhub in router mode, but disabled the normal Wi-Fi. There is a single ethernet connection to the Orbi, which I have on a different subnet (e.g 192.168.0.x for the Superhub and 192.168.1.x for Orbi and everything connected to the Orbi. Seems to work as expected – I’ve even got a printer and NAS connected (hardwired) to the Superhub and it all just works as expected.

I did think about changing the Orbi Wi-Fi name to the Superhub name, but changing networks was a good exercise and I significantly strengthened the password.

Just to mention that I dumped my bt homehub and use a google puck as my router. The problems I describe are post that.

I’ve got BT Complete Wifi, three disks around the house and Sonos connects seamlessly. The disks all appear as the same Wi-Fi router so no need to find new networks, change passwords or any settings.

When Sonos doesn’t work it is nothing to do with the mesh, it is just Sonos being flakey.

My Sonos has been rock solid generally before I binned the Sonos hub thing and it’s surprisingly been solid since, using its own mesh between devices.

I’ll check if I can run my plusnet zyxel as modem only and turn off wifi.

DOnt see why your internet provider would care want wifi network you have. Its completely agnostic. I’ve a BT Home hub with wifi disabled and running a mesh system from that with zero issues. Sonos works fine but has been twitchy in the past but that is from the SONOS side rather than the router side….susally when an update is overdue.

Has anyone done the recycle thing lately- it looks like you now don’t need to buy like for like? I’ve a pair of ZP120’s that I’ve just realised are eligible, could save an awful lot of money if so inclined.

It used to be a third off for the Sonos recycle. Didn’t seem worth it when the stuff still works well.

Powerline adapters (TP Link AV 600) seem to work okay *IF* one sonos component is hardwired into one of the powerline “outlets”, so Sonos then makes it’s own network (my understanding). Sonos using the various powerline adapters’ individual networks did not work .