Since the turn of the century I have been looking for a music system that was an easy to use mutli room audio system. Is Sonos the answer?
Well, yes and no depending on your setup. Here are some simple things you need to know.
- - UPnP must be support by your router
- - A 2.4 GHz Network is required (or at least I could not get it to work on my 5 GHz network)
I’m sure many of you meet these requirements but I did not and it took me a some time to come up with a solution. First off I run a business class network on a Cisco ASA 5505 security appliance which it turns out does not support UPnP. So I could either ditch the Cisco ASA or bring up another network router that supports UPnP. I opted to ditch Cisco, it has been a love/hate relationship with the ASA and I decided to just use the E3000 router instead which supports UPnP.
Next when I tried to use the Sonos controller on my iPad 2 it could not find the Sonos Bridge but when I used my iPhone 3GS it worked great. The difference, one uses the 2.4 GHz network and one uses the 5GHz network. Once I switched the iPad 2 to use the 2.4 GHz network it worked like a charm.
I really am sideways about Cisco not support UPnP as there are plenty of small business that use an ASA security appliance and want to have music in their waiting room or somewhere else.
Now that things are setup it works great! I’m loving the Sonos but when will Cisco support UPnP on the ASA security appliance so I can use it again… or maybe I will end up switching to another router that supports multiple public ip’s and UPnP.