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[Russell Ault]

{...} I’ve now temporarily redone the network connections so that all 6 ULXD receivers have an individual ethernet connection to a Netgear GS116 switch, {...}

The GS116 will probably make things worse (potentially a lot worse): it has 802.3az Energy-Efficient Ethernet enabled on it (with no way to disable it), which is basically a Dante-killer (unless you have a GS116E, in which case you'll be fine, just make sure to disable EEE in the switch's settings).

{...} which then has another connection out to the Cisco switch. It doesn’t strike me as being the ideal best practice, but seems to be working for now. {...}

Having more than one switch in a Dante network is basically the norm, especially on larger shows (e.g. a switch at FOH, a switch at the stage rack, a switch in the RF rack, etc.), and won't cause any problems if Dante's latency settings have been configured correctly for the maximum number of hops; is there a specific reason you'd prefer to use only one switch?

-Russ

[Brian Jojade]

I’ve now temporarily redone the network connections so that all 6 ULXD receivers have an individual ethernet connection to a Netgear GS116 switch, which then has another connection out to the Cisco switch. It doesn’t strike me as being the ideal best practice, but seems to be working for now.

STOP.

https://service.shure.com/s/article/disqualified-network-switches-for-shure-dante-devices?language=en_US

Note that the GS unmanaged switches are specifically DISQUALIFIED for use by Shure.  You WILL have problems with that configuration.

Instead of changing multiple things at once, and adding additional potential problems, simply split the receivers you have, daisy chaining just one pair, using up the 2 ethernet ports you were already using.  By making this ONE change, that will tell you if it's the culprit.

If you change 2 things and the problem still exists, you don't know if you just put in another device that can cause you additional problems.

[Gideon Kahan]

Having more than one switch in a Dante network is basically the norm, especially on larger shows (e.g. a switch at FOH, a switch at the stage rack, a switch in the RF rack, etc.), and won't cause any problems if Dante's latency settings have been configured correctly for the maximum number of hops; is there a specific reason you'd prefer to use only one switch?

-Russ

The reason for using just the one switch if possible is that apart from all the Dante kit in the control room, the two tios on the stage are in separate racks on different sides of the stage, each connected to the control room by direct ethernet ports which connect to the control room switch itself. There doesn’t seem to be any point in having an additional switch on the stage for anything with our current setup.

STOP.

https://service.shure.com/s/article/disqualified-network-switches-for-shure-dante-devices?language=en_US

Note that the GS unmanaged switches are specifically DISQUALIFIED for use by Shure.  You WILL have problems with that configuration.

Instead of changing multiple things at once, and adding additional potential problems, simply split the receivers you have, daisy chaining just one pair, using up the 2 ethernet ports you were already using.  By making this ONE change, that will tell you if it's the culprit.

If you change 2 things and the problem still exists, you don't know if you just put in another device that can cause you additional problems.

Well I eliminated that netgear trash shortly after that (although it worked without issue for events that day) and returned the entire setup to how it was, apart from the receiver layout. I have units 2, 4, and 6 daisy chained to units 1, 3, and 5 respectively, with the 1, 3, and 5 each being connected directly to the switch.

I ran into the IT guy the day after I posted last and casually asked if they had any spare switches lying around. Some building and renovation had been going on and he had just taken a couple of gigaport switches out of circulation and just gave them to me. I’ve left the original switch in place for the time being but after testing with that I switched the same layout to the ProCurve 1800-24G Switch. It’s only go 9 different connections going to it as of right now, but eventually I will connect each of the ULXDs directly to the switch.

I am trying to run everything, including the receivers into one switch which will be identical to the original network configuration except for a) the switch itself b) the receivers will not be daisy chained.

The thing is, as this issue only crops up every once in a while it’s hard to test for it other than changing one thing and waiting to see if it happens again. Everything has been fine so far.

[Jordan Wolf]

The thing is, as this issue only crops up every once in a while it’s hard to test for it other than changing one thing and waiting to see if it happens again. Everything has been fine so far.

With a nicer switch, you can probably set up SNMP alerts for certain errors (lack of network traffic, network traffic using a particular port, etc.) so that you can check the logs and see what is going on inside the network.

[Russell Ault]

{...} I switched the same layout to the ProCurve 1800-24G Switch. {...}

I'm fairly certain that switch supports 802.3az, so you'll have to make sure it's disabled for Dante to remain happy.

-Russ

[Minka Matikainen]

The reason for using just the one switch if possible is that apart from all the Dante kit in the control room, the two tios on the stage are in separate racks on different sides of the stage, each connected to the control room by direct ethernet ports which connect to the control room switch itself. There doesn’t seem to be any point in having an additional switch on the stage for anything with our current setup.

I would highly recommend to have a switch in ALL the installations (doesn't matter if it is fixed or rental) with Dante network for few obvious reasons:
- You get less hops, which means less latency and especially less variance in latency
- If one of your equipment fails, it does not affect the other (if you daisy chain and one equipment looses it's power, fails... you'll loose all the equipment behind it)
- Using switches enables reduntant topology. Of course to have it real redundancy you'll need separate switches to both lines (Primary and Secondary)
- Using big enough switch makes it easy to add i.e a computer with DVS to system, or some other Dante device, without re-cabling.

And the main thing to look at switches when you use unicast is that they are not enabled to EEE (most of the dummy ones unfortunately are, but not all, and on all the programmable ones you can disable EEE).
If you need to go to multicast (don't go if not absolutely needed) you need to take into account things like IGMP snooping, QOS...

But basically if you run just unicast, you'll be good as long as you have
- at least 1GB switch
- EEE disabled

Then, it you start to use different brand switches etc. just remember that trunking and LAG might be handled differently and the safast way is to go "port-to-port" between different manufacturers, especially with Dante which typically does not jam the network with it's load.

Br,
-Minka-

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