Network Training

[lite_lad]

Just wondering if anyone knows of anywhere that offers short courses in setting up slightly more complicated networks (setting up managed switches, more advanced setting etc...). Ideally in london. Have found one at the open university thats cisco approved which looks about right except it runs for 9 months and costs almost £3000!

 

any suggestions would be great!

[timmeh2]

Hi

 

If this is purely in relation to lighting or sound networking, then the best advice I can think of is to teach yourself. The jump from unmanaged to managed is pretty small. You can buy yourself a decent 2nd hand managed switch like a Netgear FS726 or similar for very little on eBay. You'll learn more from tinkering with it than sitting in a classroom.

 

One thing that you may find is that even big lighting networks tend to be unmanaged. There simply isn't the need to over-complicate things when it comes to opening ports and traffic management.

 

In the lighting world, speed and reliability are the main things to networks, and certain products (e.g. MA and PathPort) actually recommend the use of unmanaged networks. The reason being that intelligent switches can sometimes mistake genuine packets for a flood or DOS attack and shut down the port, node (or even your entire network if you're unlucky.) This is definitely true for Artnet 1.x as its broadcast and can generate obscene amounts of traffic. They also introduce latency, and the last thing you want in case of an issue is for it to factory-reset and close all your ports / lose the settings. Even it changing its IP back to a default (typically 192.x.x.255) will render your network instantly useless if you're running on a different subnet, which (for example), would be 10.x.x.x for MA-based networks and 2.x.x.x for Artnet.

 

Not saying that learning managed systems is a waste of time, but don't go overboard and waste your own time learning things you might not need.

 

All the best

Timmeh

[lite_lad]

It's largely for being able to setup networks with failsafes (ring networks for example) and also more in depth trouble shooting as there have been times recently where I haven't had enough knowledge to fix an issue. This isn't necessarily just about learning how to setup a managed switch, but building and fixing networks which are more suitable than unmanaged ones.

 

I'm mainly working in video, so does include things like artnet but also other protocols like TCP/IP commands and Serial over networks, large amounts of data needing to be move/distrubted etc...