NS8 and Zyxel sACN Network Setup

3 comments

  1. Brandon W. - Reply

    Hey Mark, thank you for this post it was very helpful! I’m a novice when it comes to multicast with sACN and had a question. I was curious if using an unmanaged switch (Netgear GS308) in line after a managed switch would still allow multicast to function with sACN or if that would turn to broadcast. An example would be sACN coming from my computer going to a datarack with an NS8 switch, and then running an ethernet line from the dedicated sACN vlan to an unmanaged switch to connect to a series of lights via sACN (something like Vortex 8’s). I’ve tested a setup like this with the unmanaged switch after the NS8 and before my receiving network IP in multicaster 2 and I still see a good result with 250 universes. In theory this makes sense to me because the IGMP snooping has occurred before the unmanaged switch splits the information. But all of my research online is telling me that an unmanaged switches will still turn multicast to broadcast and flood the network with it.

    • admin - Reply

      It is theoretically possible to make this system work correctly (with multicast support), but to gain any benefit from it, you’d need to set up your network in star configuration (assuming you had/needed more than two switches) rather than daisy chain. If everything is plugged into the one NS8, then it will send only the multicast data needed to each switch (and their nodes). I haven’t tested this, so I would encourage you doing that before trusting the system to help you earn a living!

      • Brandon W. - Reply

        ahhh I see. This is how I usually network my shows with a central hub but I can see how that can get cumbersome on larger shows without a sufficient amount of managed switches. I’ve seen a lot of rigging board ops install show networks using sACN with unmanaged switches and daisy chaining between switches so I’ve always treated this as the norm. Does this mean that these shows are utilizing broadcast via sACN? I think most shows in film and TV are still at a low enough universe count that Broadcast won’t cause huge problems but now you got me thinking that I’ve been misusing sACN on most of my jobs.

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