advertisement


Ethernet switches connection to router etc

Amber Audio said:
I didn’t take it that you implied it would improve sound quality but when you mentioned QoS which does manipulate data I was just wondering if you had a use case where it might influence it, pure curiosity.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't say QoS manipulates data. At most, there might be inspection, and even that is unlikely to be done by a switch. For audio applications, QoS can be useful if the network is congested. In such a case, tagging frames carrying audio data with a high priority ensures that switches will only drop them as a last resort, and they might also spend less time in various queues. None of this matters unless the network is operating near maximum capacity. In a home environment, this is extremely unlikely to be the case.
 
mansr said:
I wouldn't say QoS manipulates data. At most, there might be inspection, and even that is unlikely to be done by a switch. For audio applications, QoS can be useful if the network is congested. In such a case, tagging frames carrying audio data with a high priority ensures that switches will only drop them as a last resort, and they might also spend less time in various queues. None of this matters unless the network is operating near maximum capacity. In a home environment, this is extremely unlikely to be the case.
Click to expand...
Mainly I've used it with limited available bandwidth sites trying to maintain voice call quality. Never worried about it at home. I set the routers to prioritise (better term than manipulate) VOIP traffic.
 
Amber Audio said:
I didn’t take it that you implied it would improve sound quality but when you mentioned QoS which does manipulate data I was just wondering if you had a use case where it might influence it, pure curiosity.
Click to expand...

I was thinking primarily of Audinate's recommendations for Dante (not a million miles away from the VOIP networks you've built) - though these recommendations are for larger shared networks. It's clutching at straws a bit for a home network unless it's very congested.

I wouldn't say QoS manipulates data - it's a queuing mechanism to ensure some traffic types are prioritised when a network is very busy. The payload remains the same. But I'm guessing this is just semantics.

Def agree on allocating your budget to speakers :)

edit: @mansr beat me too it!
 
Ethernet switches.

There is as lot of misunderstanding and that is understandable. The whole audio end to end process is very complex and few would have an in depth knowledge of each and every stage. In real life its not necessary!

Its difficult to know where to start as you need to understand Ethernet before you consider how a switch works. Did you know that it was invented for a Xerox printer? The original team was DEC, Intel and Xerox and before we had IEEE 802.3 standard we had DIX. I remember in early versions of Windows (3 and 3.1) you could select either DIX or 802.3 for the LAN adapter.

Xerox also invented and built LAN connected windows computers that a young Mr Gates saw on a visit.

Cheers,

DV
 
Amber Audio said:
Mainly I've used it with limited available bandwidth sites trying to maintain voice call quality. Never worried about it at home. I set the routers to prioritise (better term than manipulate) VOIP traffic.
Click to expand...
In that context, it makes perfect sense.
 
streaming do not use tcp/ip I think, so data integrity is up to aplication, not data transfer protocol.
 
gints said:
streaming do not use tcp/ip I think, so data integrity is up to aplication, not data transfer protocol.
Click to expand...
Music streaming, whether from Qobuz/Spotify/Tidal or a local server almost always uses HTTP and thus TCP. Real-time streaming like VoIP generally uses UDP based protocols to keep the latency down.
 
mansr said:
Music streaming, whether from Qobuz/Spotify/Tidal or a local server almost always uses HTTP and thus TCP. Real-time streaming like VoIP generally uses UDP based protocols to keep the latency down.
Click to expand...
Indeed and that is over the WAN until it gets to your router. On the LAN side its MAC addresses. I know that we have devices with assigned IP addresses connected to our local LAN but communication over the LAN is at the MAC layer. The ARP network broadcast maps connected devices to their MAC and IP address.

That brings us back to Ethernet switches and they only look at the MAC address just like Ethernet Bridges. Any end-to-end protocol handling is performed in the connected devices via their protocol stacks.

Look up the OSI reference model to get an idea. There are 7 layers in this model the lower 3 grouped as the 'communications subnet' then the 'transport layer' and the top 3 layers are grouped as 'host processes'. This will help you understand at a high-level the different functions and where they are performed.

Ethernet (also Token Ring/Bus) is at layer 2 just above the Physical Layer whilst IP is layer 3. TCP and UDP are layer 4. Each layer performs its own dedicated function.

Cheers,

DV
 
robs said:
This thread seems to have degenerated into lots of wifi waving over how much you understand or not...but very little comment on whether:
Click to expand...
In the context of the OPs situation, nope, assuming you’re not considering the plastic £8 jobs. That twenty quid Netgear is totally fine for the majority of home use scenarios and a £500 Enterprise grade one overkill/overspend.
 
robs said:
This thread seems to have degenerated into lots of wifi waving over how much you understand or not...but very little comment on whether:
Click to expand...

I think the OP's question was answered and action taken by post #10 already.
To be honest, I've found the rest of the thread to be entertaining, informative and very useful reading. I know a fair bit more now than I did before.
 
Fair comment miktec! The answer is clearly no, and the rest is informative...
 
Darth Vader said:
Indeed and that is over the WAN until it gets to your router. On the LAN side its MAC addresses. I know that we have devices with assigned IP addresses connected to our local LAN but communication over the LAN is at the MAC layer. The ARP network broadcast maps connected devices to their MAC and IP address.
Click to expand...
I have no idea what you are trying to say. The connection between the server storing the music and the client playing it is usually built on TCP. That's all that matters. The link layer could be carrier pigeons for all TCP cares.
 
mansr said:
I have no idea what you are trying to say. The connection between the server storing the music and the client playing it is usually built on TCP. That's all that matters. The link layer could be carrier pigeons for all TCP cares.
Click to expand...
Exactly! The OP is about Ethernet switches that work where? Where its effectively invisible to the higher layers ! Therefore a cheapo switch that is within spec is all that is required.

QED

Cheers,

DV
 
Anyone genuinely interested in the effect of the network on sound quality should just try listening with the router powered off vs playing files from a NAS etc.

A bit of a hassle to set up a fair test perhaps, but then at least you'll have a data point to go with all the newly acquired "theory" ;-)
 
Heckyman said:
Anyone genuinely interested in the effect of the network on sound quality should just try listening with the router powered off vs playing files from a NAS etc
Click to expand...

You know what?
I tried once , in my case just local streaming ,and worked much better the latter.
 
I use one of these. I hang one of the 1G, £20 switches, off one of the ports for the 'crap', but the spine of my system is wired at 10G. Even if I had the capacity, I very much doubt that I could really run all the ports at 10G simultaneously , just like you can't run all the ports of a 1G switch at full capacity. I swapped out the fan for a Noctua because it's in my main room and while it's not silent it's now much less loud than the Sky box. There's nothing much inside, these things are built around the latest chipset (much like routers are) and very little else. There will be noise off the mains but then there's a load of other junk on the ring - not least the sodding fridge...

61C0sZ6r71L._AC_SL1500_.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top