Smiffy Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 Hi Guys: I'm looking to spec a general purpose Ethernet Switch / Hub that will be good for ArtNet, Ethernet, MA Net, ETC-Net, and so on. It needs to be rack-mountable, and ideally only about 1U, but on that I'm flexible. Any and all suggestions gratefully received. Cheers Smiffy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac.calder Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 If it is just a switch for a lighting network, any 10/100 switch will be more than plenty for most uses. I bought 4 TP-link 16 port 10/100 switches for < AU$100 the lot . One of them I use in our portable ArtNet rack - works a treat (much better than not having a switch in the rack)... I also use an ELC 5 port PoE switch with ethercons for truss lines - the PoE is nice if you want to power smaller nodes (like the PathPort 2 channel nodes) - the ELC switch costs a small fortune though. If you are planning complex networks, layer 2 managed gigabit switch for the backbone, definitely (my preference falls with Cisco or HP in those cases) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smiffy Posted February 1, 2011 Author Share Posted February 1, 2011 More complex networks in general Mac. Many thanks. Any favourite Models that you might recommend? Cheers Smiffy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac.calder Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 HP E2520 - L2 managed, PoE, Gigabit if needed. 8 or 24 ports. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Hallett Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 Although a note of caution with managed switches. They really should come with a big sign saying 'Here be dragons' because there are myriad ways with a managed switch to either completely break your network - or to slow it to snail's pace. There are some very clever things they can do and they can be useful for monitoring load on the network - but you really really need to know what you're tweaking. If you want a gigabit switch for the backbone we're using a few 8 port ethercon Luminex switches for that at the moment on a system which has got slightly over 30,000 DMX channels pixelmapped over 79 streams of DMX on broadcast ArtNet (hence reasonably high network traffic) and it's running just fine on unmanaged switches. Cheers, Dave. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smiffy Posted February 1, 2011 Author Share Posted February 1, 2011 Hi Dave: many thanks. I've always avoided managed switches in the past having been bitten once (ports getting shut down thinking they were being attacked) so you speak much sense. I shall have a look at the luminex stuff now. Thanking you Smiffy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Hallett Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 I don't know whether Luminex do 10/100 kit as well - I tend to use the PRG Series 400 ethercon switches for that but of course they're hire only. I've recently bought myself a Cisco managed switch to have a play with and try to work out how to tame the various dragons - but they're certainly far from plug and play. It's still very much up in the air which side of the 'making life easier / making life harder' balance they live :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac.calder Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 They fall on the making life harder side... but when you are pushing a lot of data over a network using a number of protocols they can give enormous performance gains (ie directing broadcast packets on 2.255.255.255) only down the required ports etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomo Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 There's really two classes of switch worth considering - Fully Managed and Dumb-as-a-brick. The ones in the middle tend to cause trouble - they do clever stuff by default, pretty much all of which you want to turn off... and often can't! With a managed switch, the main thing to remember is that the factory-default config will almost certainly be inappropriate for theatrical usage.Translation: "Lots of clever stuff that's great in an office environment, but you really don't want" I generally prefer dumb-as-a-brick (where available), as unless you've got a very large amount of data all on the same network, or are sharing a common backbone with other services (eg other spaces in your venue), switch management doesn't give you very much. That said, it can be worth paying the extra for a managed switch (then turning all the cleverness off) to get the hardware features (eg number of ports) and better build quality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
themadhippy Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 TMB were showing of a ruggidised switch at plasa the other year,however it apears to still be under construction http://www.tmb.com/products/ProPlex/DDD/GBS/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martinw Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 Pathway have a new switch which is designed specifically for lighting control protocols. Martin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tom_the_LD Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 We use HP Procurve E2510's at work - my IT job that is. They have 24 or 48 gigabit ports on them and are a managed switch. However, they're not the quietest of things - so if they're going to be sat in a rack which will be in the auditorium then consider other options. I'm suprised nobody has mentioned this yet actually! Unless all you do is rock and roll gigs - in which case it's not as much of an issue! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keeper of the Keys Posted February 2, 2011 Share Posted February 2, 2011 If the switch is located with the high density dimmers I doubt the fan noise from the switch will outdo the dimmers...But you're right it's not the type of equipment to stick in quiet places without modifying the fans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3guk Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 I've always found that it tends to be broadcast storm protection on managed / semi-manged switches that causes the most issues, especially with regards to artnet. Lots of the features you'd get with a decent Managed switch tend to be lost in an Artnet Network anyhow, although that said, if you are looking at content / data distribution with regards to media servers then managed switches can be a life saver. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac.calder Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 The main features that make a managed switch useful are Vlans and their trunking systems. Lets say I am using a gbit switch at FOH and one at media server/dimmer land, by using a managed switch I can use a spanning tree type protocol to allow me to use 3 or 4 ports for that link, giving me a 4gb link. That means my file transfers will get their full gbit link and not kill my artnet/ma-net/etc. It also gives me redundancy on my primary link. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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