I’m looking for a switch that properly supports multicasting. This is for a lighting application using e1.31/S.ACN. Current I am using unicasting but I would prefer to move to multicast so I only have to worry about configuring DMX universes instead of both universes and IP. As I understand it, if a switch doesn’t support multicast, those packets are broadcasted across all ports, which is what I don’t want.
There is information on the wiki about routing multicast packets but I haven’t found any on whether the switch chips support proper multicasting and I won’t need to worry about routing for this application (not yet anyway). I was planning on getting something like a RB260GS for this purpose - does it support proper multicasting?
I have not used the dedicated switches like this, but the regular RouterOS products do not really provide any type of Layer 2 multicast management, i.e. IGMP and the like. I would look elsewhere if you have a multicast-based system. Mikrotik has commented in the forums that IGMP is bad, but I think I recall it’s at least now on the list for implementation. IGMP and RSTP (in hardware) on the CRS series would be great.
Doh, thanks for confirming! Multicast system will largely be separated from my normal network. I was hoping to keep things in the Mikrotik family of products but I have a list of recommended switches from other brands that are known to work with multicast/IGMP.
From reading up on this, at least with sACN it seems like it can be hard to get multicasting right, but when it works, it works quite well. Here’s hoping MikroTik decide to implement better support for it in the future!
“Proper” multicast support on a simple switch is exactly broadcasting across all ports. I think you mean if the switch supports IGMP snooping which is the proper terminology on this, and which would allow multicast traffic only on ports which have joined the multicast group.
And the answer for the RB260 is no, it is not supported.
I wouldn’t call broadcasting multicast packets proper but yes basically a switch that supports IGMP. In the context of sACN and lighting controllers, DMX universe data should only be sent to the controllers that are configured for said universes. That makes the system both rather efficient and easy to use. So it would certainly be a welcome feature.