10/100/1000

Thomas Hayes

With the greater increase in the networking world has anyone heard if AMX is planning to add 1 Gb to its standards?

DHawthorne

From a control standpoint, it hardly matters, the packets are tiny. It's only for streaming media and VOIP that you would see any real difference. My experience has been that wireless is more of a bottleneck than 100M vs 1G, and if it's wired I'd just as well run a video line too.

Thomas Hayes

I was thinking more along the new standards line rather than the packets size. 10 is almost dead, 100 is also hitting that way. But I fully agree with you in regards to the packet size etc.

vining

Most AMX decives should be fine using 10/100 since they don't have much to say. The port on the access layer switch that connects to these devices should also be fine at 10/100 since none of these individual devices require any bandwidth. The access layer switch that all these devices connect to should have a 1gig backbone to handle the cumulative port traffic and a couple 1gig ports to connect to the distribution layer switch if there are more than 1 access layer switches in the network. Typically if you have multiple access layer switches you need a distribution layer switch as an aggregation point for all these access layer switches and this distribution layer switch should have 1 gig ports to connect to the access layer switches and then maybe a 3-5 gig backbone to handle the cumulative traffic.

I believe the MAX devices are also fine connected to a 10/100 switch port all be it a seperate switch with only MAX connected devices on it. Again this switch needs a gigabit backbone to handle the cumulative traffic of all its ports but the individual ports are fine at 10/100. I don't know the spces on the MAX stuff and maybe if they start supporting 1080P w/ 5.1 streams a 10/100/1000 device port would be required and then you'd need a switch w/ a 3-5 gig backbone.

Since we're also starting to add voice (IP Telephony of some flavor) to our data networks you also need to consider using switches that support 802.1Q(?) VLAN trunking so that each sevice (voice, data) can be on its own VLAN and then assign the voice VLAN a higher class of service COS for voice QOS.

So even if you just do resi systems you mught need to start using business class gear.

Thomas Hayes

I was really trying to see if AMX was planning to update their equipment to 10/100/1000 in the near future since 1Gb networks are become more the main. I am using my systems on a 1 Gb system using smart switches at 100Mb Auto over my own private Vlan.

bcirrisi

I look at AMX dragging their feet to 1G as a benefit... When ever I go to a project, I can always identify AMX stuff on a switch because it is the only stuff on the LAN that has 100m lite up on the switch.

Kenny

When AMX can no longer get the 10/100 ethernet chips then they would go to the 1gig chips.
Why use up valuable engineering time to make changes that gives zero return on investment?
Just my 2 pennies worth.

DHawthorne

MAX servers have two NIC's ... one for control, the other for media streaming. You really only need the media NIC to have 1G. The AVP's connect to the 1G network.

vining

The AVP's only have a 10/100 port so you could just install a switch w/ 24 10/100 port and 4 10/100/1000 ports. Use the 10/100 ports for the AVP and connect the MAX server to one of the 10/100/1000 ports.

I like the line diagram AMX has on the website for a MAX installation. They use a single switch and they put everything on it, the master, TPs, R4 gateways, PCs, cameras, the MAX server and the AVPs. I don't know if I'd want to do that with a MAX server, I think I'd like to keep that all isolated on it's own switch and not burden the data & possible voice network with the video (media) distribution stuff. For the price of the MAX hardware you should be able to swing another switch with a 1 gig back bone and a least one 1 gig port to connect the server.

DHawthorne

vining wrote: »

The AVP's only have a 10/100 port so you could just install a switch w/ 24 10/100 port and 4 10/100/1000 ports. Use the 10/100 ports for the AVP and connect the MAX server to one of the 10/100/1000 ports.

I like the line diagram AMX has on the website for a MAX installation. They use a single switch and they put everything on it, the master, TPs, R4 gateways, PCs, cameras, the MAX server and the AVPs. I don't know if I'd want to do that with a MAX server, I think I'd like to keep that all isolated on it's own switch and not burden the data & possible voice network with the video (media) distribution stuff. For the price of the MAX hardware you should be able to swing another switch with a 1 gig back bone and a least one 1 gig port to connect the server.

The AVP may only be 10/100, but the backbone still should be 1G to support multiple streams without loss. Perhaps a very good quality 10/100 with only one hop would be ok, but my practical experience is that your standard consumer grade switch won't handle it. I had plenty of difficulty getting quality video on my MAX install until I pulled out all the 10/100's and replaced them with 1G. Technically, it really shouldn't matter, and maybe if I spent $500 a switch instead of $79 it wouldn't have. And you definitely need any switch-to-switch hops to be 1G.

They also leave out the part that if you use a single switch like that, it absolutely must be managed. My last initial setup, before I partitioned and optimized said switch, was like watching a slide show ... 10 fps at best. Even worse, the MAX doesn't just slow the stream when packets are lost, it re-syncs and outright drops the intervening material. You actually miss stuff on network errors. So, by all rights, that "single" switch is really logically divided into several, and the the ports are further set to prioritize the media traffic.