sACN and ArtNet

Hi Johannes,

unfortunately this is not just a yes or no answer.

Its like asking if you could drink Coca-Cola and Pepsi at the same time.

Yes, if you had two straws, and drank small amounts from both glasses, this would work at the same time.

But if two People held two five gallon buckets of the Coca-Cola and Pepsi drinks above your head and started pouring,

the experience would not be as effective.

Yes, you can send sACN and Artnet out of one of the network adapters at the same time, but because Artnet 1 & 2 can use lots of the network bandwidth under certain cirumstances, its best to try and limit the number of Artnet Universes to only 1 or 2 universes, specially depending on the number of devices and types of traffic on the network.  

As sACN is very light weight, having ca. 8x sACN Universes alongside1x Universe Artnet out of the Cobalt should work ok.

This is not a black/white or yes/no topic.

Artnet has 4 different Versions of its protocol (whereas Version 4 now uses sACN to Transport dmx

data over the Network).

Artnet Version 1 which is what most consoles - including ETC Cobalt/Eos Family - use and it does not support 32K Universes.

That would only be Artnet 3 (and now also Artnet 4).

I think using 3x Artnet Universes and 5x sACN Universes out of an ETC Cobalt Family Console could lead to problems.

To make a good analysis without trying it on site, one would need to know the entire System Network including all devices (names, Network address info),

the Switches and their configs, the cabling types, etc. Easier would be to try it out in the Network and try to stress it out and see how it responds.

Networks can be such a complicated thing.

I recommend contacting your local dealer or ETC Office and get them involved in determining how many Artnet Universes your system could handle.

The Art-Net and sACN universe counts in their specification/standards are the absolute maximums.

They are the theoretical limit if you had infinite bandwidth and infinite processing capability.

In real life, you have neither of those.

Art-Net (Art-DMX) tops out at around 4-8 universes.
This is primarily because the receiving devices can't cope and the switches think it looks like an attack on the network infrastructure.
Some networks and receiving devices can handle more, some cannot.
Art-Net 2/3 can increase the universe count if you have a small number of receiving devices that each want multiple universes, but they don't work at all if you have "many" receivers.

sACN tops out at around 150 universes on 100Mb/s network links, with any number of receiving devices.
To go higher you need managed switches and at least some gigabit or better backbones.

General rules of thumb:

- Maximum of 4 universes of Art-Net Art-DMX, unless you really have to.
- All universes of sACN.

(As Corey said, Art-Net 4 lets you use sACN instead, so do that if you can.)

Unknown said:

Because adding options requires many resources to develop, implement and test. What one thinks to maybe just be some little addition could be a massive amount of work internally which would cost a lot and possibly raise the price of the product which might not be justified based on the number of people that would actually use it - especially for a protocol that’s not standardized and could be changed again in a possible Artnet v5. There are already great protocols like RDM and sACN which can be used for this and are standardized.

 

Talking about "Higher prize" on a discontinued product? "ETC don't want to put the money in to it" fine, but talking about a free software will cost more? What I know you can't get a new Cobalt desk any more... You make it sound like we save money on it. but there is nothing to buy. ;-)

But if money is the issue why did ETC spend $10,000+ on the TSP around the time of E1.31 's development?