Hello there,
first of all, I am looking at this from a network perspective with some experience in Audio-Engineering.
I am new to MikroTik and was now asked by a band to help with the network setup in their new Audio-Rack.
They are using a Behringer X-Wing , which has two Ethernet ports. One is used for the Dante network, the other one is used to access the Web-Interface of the X-Wing.
My plan is to keep these two networks strictly apart using VLANs:
The Dante network needs with at least three ports (one for the X-Wing, one for the connection to the FoH/Mixer and one as an emergency on-stage backup.
The Management-Network also needs at least 3 ports (one for the X-Wing, one for a WiFi-AP, so each band-member can tune their own in-ear mix, and again one wired backup, in case all frequencies are occupied on a big event). It also needs a DHCP server and I want to leave myself the option to provide internet through a separate 5G router.
As far as I know, Dante is quite sensible to the stability of the network connection. It is crucial that Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) is turned off and L2 QoS as well as IGMP Snooping should also be enabled. The Dante traffic should also never hit the CPU of a potential router and directly be switched by the switching chip.
I’m thinking of using the L009UiGS-2HaxD-IN. It has built-in WiFi, enough ports to cover everything and if I understand the Block-Diagram directly, ports 2-8 hit the switching chip directly.
Has anyone experience with Dante / AV networks and can tell me, if this device is the sensible All-in-one solution or if it’s better to buy a suitable switch, connect a separate WiFi-AP and a small DHCP-Server of some sorts (RasPi, hEX, whatever).
I am not sure if the above-mentioned device fit’s all requirements and needs.
This pops up sometimes on the forum, and there are a couple of valid takes on the subject.
First of all, Mikrotik enables EEE by default, and there's no way to disable it. There were repeated requests about this, and it was semi-promised that they would look into it, but currently this doesn't help you that much. The good news is that EEE is a negotiated setting, and is only ever active if both sides agree to it, so if you have equipment that has it disabled, there's nothing to worry about.
Both QoS and IGMP snooping for Dante are a bit overrated and somewhat of a red herring. As long as the interfaces are not saturated and switching is done in hardware, there's no problem. With regard to IGMP, there really isn't any danger of unnecessary flooding, so against the recommendation, I would suggest not using it.
Your plan is perfectly sound: a single bridge with vlans, where all ports are access ports will lead to separate switching domains, with switching between them done in hardware. Properly configured, this will work fine.
The other approach (that to my taste is bit overly cautious) is to simply use a separate switch for the Dante part of your network (one that you are sure about working correctly with Dante), and only connect this on a single port with your L009 to provide DHCP and other things that are not timing critical. This is also a sound approach.
I'm bit confused... Are you sure you need/have Dante? If you have some Behringer/Midas gear, they normally use AES50 for their stage boxes, and P16/Ultranet for monitoring control devices.
So assuming you have the Dante expantion card for Behringer/Midas, they normally have a primary and secondary, which is why I'm confused since you talk about the management port. But 2nd Dante port on the expansion card is a "secondary" Dante network for audio redundancy.
On the switch advice, tend to agree with @lurker888 that if you're network is only Dante, don't bother with high-end switches with QoS. Dante was designed to be used with consumer switches. Where you need a high-end switch is two-fold:
If your mixing internet/video traffic on same network, as if the network get saturated you do want Dante to prioritized by QoS.
You're using Dante in AES67 mode, as ideally you'd want switches to support PTPv2.
So an L009 be good device, assuming you can give up HW QoS and PTPv2, as it does not support it (and nor do any of the "home/office" catagory devices).
If you want to go with a "real" switch to get HW QoS and PTPv2, you need to cross-reference the following docs, which generally means some CRS3xx, CRS5xx, CCR2116, CCR2216, etc:
Anyway, some diagram/stageplot of your gear might help give better advice. Also are the switch/route only for audio, and do you expect to need to "mix" video (NDI/ST2110/RTP/SRT/etc) and/or internet traffic on the same switches?
Hello,
first of all, thanks to both of you for your quick and detailed replies, they are really helpful.
Yes, we do have the internal Dante expansion card, which doesn’t replace the two SD-Card slots on the Behringer Wing Rack. The built-in ports can be configured to either both be used for Dante or one for Dante and one to access the web interface which is the route we’re going since we don’t need a redundant connection.
I was under the impression that these two are different solutions to achieve the same goal. Didn’t know there was a “Dante AES67 mode”. I guess we’re not using it if I don’t know about it. Is it something commonly used which I should be worried about?
Both of your advice has already been really solid, thanks for that! We currently don’t have such a diagram and are in the process of creating it. We’re in a bit of a time crunch since the first gigs are already around the corner and we want to play them using the new gear ;).
Yes! I’m planning to use one VLAN on a separate bride, disconnected from the router chip, for Dante only (with static IP assignments) and the other network is for the WebGUI as well as possibly internet access.
It would not be the default. Never seen the DANTE-WING, but uses same Brooklyn-II as other consoles, so AES67 should be settable via the Dante Controller app.
The two reasons for AES67 be use with ST21xx video, or if you need "Dante-on-Linux" since there is no DVS/Via or OSS driver for "real" Dante, but there are AES67 drivers for Linux... so if you change all Dante device to use AES67 mode, then you can use Linux as source/destination for a Dante netwrok.
One thing to keep in mind Dante Controller will only run via Ethernet, it will not work over Wi-Fi, and laptop using it must be on the Dante network (perhaps in addition to mgmt/control network - but the mgmt/console network will not be able to configure Dante routing)
You should be start with the default config, leaving the bridge as management / "console" network. Then add a VLAN for Dante, and tag ports as needed for Dante. The default Wi-Fi already be on the management. Leave ether1 for future internet uplink.
The one thing to note is the L009 only has 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi. For a large venue, the may be better since it have more reach and you don't need high speeds for control apps. While AX helps, 2.4Ghz can be congested, but if you smartphone/tablet don't support AX (Wi-Fi 6).
Now you can always add an external AP if needed, which have the benifit of place 2nd AP at FOH if L009 at BOH. So I still think L009 be decent choice here.
The only unknown is EEE... but it should not trigger unless you use multiple switches between Dante devices. Dante devices like DANTE-WING or Shure rack etc would never request EEE, but intermediate switches might trip EEE). MikroTik is aware the should have an option to explicitly disable EEE, so hopefully it be even more certain in future...