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Author Topic: Dante on new laptops without Ethernet ports?  (Read 15499 times)

Justice C. Bigler

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Re: Dante on new laptops without Ethernet ports?
« Reply #20 on: September 02, 2017, 01:41:51 PM »

As Dante adheres completely to TCP/IP Ethernet protocol, it is totally divorced from any need to test hardware. Dante will run on all Ethernet hardware, and if it doesn't it's a user error (lack of networking knowledge) or the hardware is faulty. That is why Audinate is not in the business of compatibility recommendations.
I disagree with this.


There have been several instances when I myself have experienced that Dante doesn't run on certain NICs. I had a laptop that wouldn't run Dante without introducing extreme latency, like multiple seconds. No amount of troubleshooting or restoring drivers etc... was able to fix the problem. That same laptop ran any other Ethernet connection just fine. The only solution was to get a different laptop.


Also, my current main workstation at work seems to be having some odd issues with DVS and our Mac Pro that don't make any sense and I haven't been able to find a fix for yet.
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Justice C. Bigler
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Aram Piligian

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Re: Dante on new laptops without Ethernet ports?
« Reply #21 on: September 03, 2017, 11:23:27 AM »

I've also run into issues on computers where one driver manages the wired and wireless NICs.  Running spotify through Dante Via while connected to the internet over wifi works for a little while, and then starts getting choppy and eventually dropping out completely.  Only way to rectify it is to disconnect from wifi.  There's all kinds of little gotchas on a seemingly per-device basis...
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Russell Ault

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Re: Dante on new laptops without Ethernet ports?
« Reply #22 on: September 04, 2017, 01:48:01 AM »

As Dante adheres completely to TCP/IP Ethernet protocol, it is totally divorced from any need to test hardware. Dante will run on all Ethernet hardware, and if it doesn't it's a user error (lack of networking knowledge) or the hardware is faulty. That is why Audinate is not in the business of compatibility recommendations.

I also disagree with this. The reason Audinate makes so few compatibility recommendations is because Virtual Soundcard and Via are the only Dante-based products that rely on off-the-shelf Ethernet NICs. In every "real" Dante application (i.e. hardware of some kind), if you peal back the manufacturer's packaging you'll always find that the networking chip (everything from at least the MII on up) is actually an Audinate part running Audinate firmware. Needless to say, it's a given that Audinate's hardware is compatible with itself.

Dante as a protocol was clearly designed to "play nice" with off-the-shelf switches (which, if they are small, can have a full switching throughput while still being relatively easy to design and cheap to build). That said, Dante's constant clocking datagrams require sub-millisecond timing accuracy to make the network sync properly, and that can definitely give off-the-shelf NICs a run for their money. UDP/IP is a well-defined standard, but to say that Dante will run on "all Ethernet hardware" places a tonne of (IMO misplaced) faith in the firmware- and drive-writing abilities of NIC chipset OEMs, most of whom care only about more mainstream network applications (and their own bottom lines).

For me, the bottom line is this: if off-the-shelf NICs were capable of passing Dante reliably, Audinate would never have bothered to build their own.

-Russ
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Re: Dante on new laptops without Ethernet ports?
« Reply #22 on: September 04, 2017, 01:48:01 AM »


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