That led me to start thinking about things differently. This isn’t a corporate network, the computers aren’t standardized. The devices are all over the place and may be of questionable “consumer” quality, and with home automation and audio devices, the data and response time became critical. I started thinking about all the various devices I had, some of which are older, and really sort out what was going on, one “system” at a time.
Using Apple HomeKit as well as Homebridge, I found that MDNS (aka Bonjour aka a million other names) was critical, which uses all broadcast traffic, so having a poor network there can definitely cause delays loading the home app and getting the status of things.
Sonos also uses MDNS, and on top of that, the Sonos speakers can actually provide their own WIFI network and automatically talk to each other through it, which can introduce all sorts of fun issues as well as channel conflicts. Even more, I have one older Sonos speaker, and the rest being newer, I thought maybe updating Sonos to the “2.0” system could help as well. Well changing it, to where most of my speakers were now Sonos 2.0, with one speaker in it’s own “1.0 system” actually exacerbated things; it was clear the two systems were fighting each other, and even depending on what wifi network I connected to, made it worse or better, so clearly that wasn’t the answer, but now I needed to fix things even more, or just stop using these products.
I next turned my attention to the products themselves; I have some older stuff, and perhaps some homekit devices or Sonos devices, are just glitchy? Doing some searching revealed that all sorts of network issues could come into play with Sonos systems, and at some point I considered just dumping all my Sonos speakers, despite loving their functionality (When they worked).
Ultimately, I realized these older routers were likely the crux of my issue, and I happened on a cheap Linksys router on a clearance shelf at Staples. Screw it, even a cheap junk router may be better than these oldies I have, so I swapped the main router for the Linksys, and lo and behold, MAJOR improvement.