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    bdkauff
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Networking an ETC Ion with one network port

Hi all,

Theater maker/tech lead here. I've got a show that controls the ETC ION using OSC via Qlab. In most theaters, we've had Ions with 2 ethernet ports, and we use their secondary port for our cueing needs. An upcoming theater we're going to only has 1 port, but says "we do have a switch adapter that holds multiple ports."

I'm not quite deep enough on networking to know if this is trustworthy and will work. If they're using their only port for their "primary" house LX needs, does physically adding ports via a switch mean that we'll actually have a "secondary" port for our cueing needs?

I can change the IP address in Qlab so we're on the same network, but not sure if that's sufficient to give us the control we need.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Ben

Parents

  • Using a switch should work without a problem. Mainly the quality of the switch can cause some problems with multicast.
    You should use a managed high quality switch, set IGMP snooping on and activate the spanning tree protocol.

  • in reply to sstaub
    sstaub said:
    set IGMP snooping on and activate the spanning tree protocol.

    Isn't this a bit OverPower for this setup?

    Especially the Spanning Tree?

  • in reply to mathilda

    No, this is necessary when you use more than one switch in the system.
    - IGMP snooping forwards the Multicast groups, which are used for sACN, to the other switches
    and also looks for wrong multicast traffic.
    - Spanning Tree is useful to avoid loops in the the network system which can crash the whole system.
    This can happen when there is a wrong patch connection.

    In this case it is not clear which network infrastructure is present.

  • in reply to sstaub

    Spanning tree (so long as it is Rapid (RSTP)) is never overkill. It should always be enabled.


    IGMP can be overkill on small networks, it could also cause unexpected issues in the wrong hands.
    Case in point, you would also need an IGMP querier in the system when IGMP snooping is enabled.

    My rule of thumb is:

    • < 10 universe no need for IGMP

    • > 10 universes consider using IGMP

Reply
  • in reply to sstaub

    Spanning tree (so long as it is Rapid (RSTP)) is never overkill. It should always be enabled.


    IGMP can be overkill on small networks, it could also cause unexpected issues in the wrong hands.
    Case in point, you would also need an IGMP querier in the system when IGMP snooping is enabled.

    My rule of thumb is:

    • < 10 universe no need for IGMP

    • > 10 universes consider using IGMP

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