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[David King]

I am working on a DMX network for a large amusement park. They built their data infrastructure for IT and thoughtlessly did not leave enough dark fibre and copper for a dedicated parkwide lighting network.

The solution they requested was to use a VLAN on their existing conventional network since the actual DMX load would be rather light (mostly on/off and some infrequent show control commands). Due to the architecture, a single parkwide VLAN is not possible and ART-NET broadcasting is definitely out.

sACN appeared to be the solution. IT functions over a network in UDP Multicast mode and in theory should be rout-able across VLANs.

We have sACN working within a single VLAN (and a Layer 2 network) but doesn't work on our Layer 3 test network. The test network consists of just two Cisco 35xx managed switches (configured to emulate a Layer 3 network), some test PCs and one Luminex DMX4 and one DMX8, a DMX console and LED instrument. During our troubleshooting we verified that all ports were open to assure port 5568 (or any other we may need) is clear. There is no DHCP server and all IP addresses have been manually assigned except for the multicast IPs in the DMX processors which default to 239.xxx.uuu.uuu (u=universe).

The DMX devices sent sACN DMX commands beautifully on a single VLAN or Layer 2 network.
The UDP multi-casting worked well over the Layer 3 network with the test PCs.

But the DMX in devices (in the same multicast mode) don't do S**t on Layer 3 no matter whet we have tried.  Any ideas?

[Todd Black]

I am working on a DMX network for a large amusement park. They built their data infrastructure for IT and thoughtlessly did not leave enough dark fibre and copper for a dedicated parkwide lighting network.

The solution they requested was to use a VLAN on their existing conventional network since the actual DMX load would be rather light (mostly on/off and some infrequent show control commands). Due to the architecture, a single parkwide VLAN is not possible and ART-NET broadcasting is definitely out.

sACN appeared to be the solution. IT functions over a network in UDP Multicast mode and in theory should be rout-able across VLANs.

We have sACN working within a single VLAN (and a Layer 2 network) but doesn't work on our Layer 3 test network. The test network consists of just two Cisco 35xx managed switches (configured to emulate a Layer 3 network), some test PCs and one Luminex DMX4 and one DMX8, a DMX console and LED instrument. During our troubleshooting we verified that all ports were open to assure port 5568 (or any other we may need) is clear. There is no DHCP server and all IP addresses have been manually assigned except for the multicast IPs in the DMX processors which default to 239.xxx.uuu.uuu (u=universe).

The DMX devices sent sACN DMX commands beautifully on a single VLAN or Layer 2 network.
The UDP multi-casting worked well over the Layer 3 network with the test PCs.

But the DMX in devices (in the same multicast mode) don't do S**t on Layer 3 no matter whet we have tried.  Any ideas?

MPLS might be an option (if your switches support it) as it can create a virtual layer 2 circuit across multiple routers and switches without the packets being handled at layer 3 (i am not a network engineer so I may be off a bit on the layer terminology)

[Jason Vanick]

MPLS might be an option (if your switches support it) as it can create a virtual layer 2 circuit across multiple routers and switches without the packets being handled at layer 3 (i am not a network engineer so I may be off a bit on the layer terminology)

your network guy might need to enable PIM (protocol-independent-multicast) on the layer3 portion of the network:

commands needed:

ip multicast-routing

---on each VLAN 'interface':

int vlan XXX
ip pim sparse-dense-mode

without that, it's unlikely the multicast traffic will cross vlan 'boundaries'

-J

[ProSoundWeb Community]