Net3 and VLAN's

I'll put on my IT hat, and second Tom with my own two cents and qualifications.  Please note, this may be more information than you wanted...

The amount of money you would spend on new networking gear and the time to program would most likely outweigh the benefit in this situation.  Plus unless you do have an IT professional on staff who is able to packet inspect the network, or you are such a person, its probably not a good idea.  A modern Layer 2 or 3 routed managed switch is really not a DIY project. 

With the low cost and relatively high efficiency of modern unmanaged switches, unless you have a really good reason to put this stuff on the same hardware, I wouldn't.

Having said that, here are some situations where this would merit consideration:

• Centralization and Redundancy - If your networks are all over the place in the building on different wire, on different power, and no one knows where any of it goes, or exactly where all the end points of each particular switch is, then maybe Centralization will be good for you.  Its pretty hard to troubleshoot something if you have no clear idea about how its tied together.  If doing this will bring everything back into one IT room/Dimmer Room, etc. than maybe this would be a good move.  Also if you in a situation where network failure would be catastrophic (I'm talking like lights in a casino..) then centralization allows you to put in redundant switches and power backup systems.  But remember, this is a two way street.  In the current configuration with everything separate, a problem with the hardware on the lighting network will not affect sound.  In a centralized system this is no longer true.
• Security - Again, on a system where security is important (ie casino networks) VLANing is an effective way of managing and segregating and monitoring traffic to prevent the compromise of one system affecting another.  This is almost never a concern in a lighting control network
• Logistics - In a facility that doesn't have room to add more switches and patch panels, VLANing is an effective way to expand.  Also there are sometimes that one swtich is much better than two.  We once had to engineer a control network for a bridge.  The master control station is a 1/4 mile away in another bridge over fiber.  To run the LEDs and the ETC gear we chose to use VLANs instead of multiple switches just because of the cost of fiber pulls and space considerations.

In all these situations it can be a pain to configure, espeically to maintain QoS (Quality of Service) that entertainment protocols require.

I'll put on my IT hat, and second Tom with my own two cents and qualifications.  Please note, this may be more information than you wanted...

The amount of money you would spend on new networking gear and the time to program would most likely outweigh the benefit in this situation.  Plus unless you do have an IT professional on staff who is able to packet inspect the network, or you are such a person, its probably not a good idea.  A modern Layer 2 or 3 routed managed switch is really not a DIY project. 

With the low cost and relatively high efficiency of modern unmanaged switches, unless you have a really good reason to put this stuff on the same hardware, I wouldn't.

Having said that, here are some situations where this would merit consideration:

• Centralization and Redundancy - If your networks are all over the place in the building on different wire, on different power, and no one knows where any of it goes, or exactly where all the end points of each particular switch is, then maybe Centralization will be good for you.  Its pretty hard to troubleshoot something if you have no clear idea about how its tied together.  If doing this will bring everything back into one IT room/Dimmer Room, etc. than maybe this would be a good move.  Also if you in a situation where network failure would be catastrophic (I'm talking like lights in a casino..) then centralization allows you to put in redundant switches and power backup systems.  But remember, this is a two way street.  In the current configuration with everything separate, a problem with the hardware on the lighting network will not affect sound.  In a centralized system this is no longer true.
• Security - Again, on a system where security is important (ie casino networks) VLANing is an effective way of managing and segregating and monitoring traffic to prevent the compromise of one system affecting another.  This is almost never a concern in a lighting control network
• Logistics - In a facility that doesn't have room to add more switches and patch panels, VLANing is an effective way to expand.  Also there are sometimes that one swtich is much better than two.  We once had to engineer a control network for a bridge.  The master control station is a 1/4 mile away in another bridge over fiber.  To run the LEDs and the ETC gear we chose to use VLANs instead of multiple switches just because of the cost of fiber pulls and space considerations.

In all these situations it can be a pain to configure, espeically to maintain QoS (Quality of Service) that entertainment protocols require.