Ethernet switches aren’t exactly made for audio. And yet, they are the backbone of the IP audio networked facility. They have the power to make or break, literally, your broadcast operation. Here are a few things we’ve learned over the years in working with switches.

IP audio networks for broadcast are built on multicast, WheatNet IP audio included. Ethernet switches do not natively manage multicast traffic. They send multicast packets to every port on the switch, whether the devices connected to those ports requested streams or not. When more traffic arrives at the port than the device can handle, flooding occurs and that results in audio dropouts or complete loss of audio.

For this and other reasons, managed switches are best for broadcast. These Ethernet switches have control, security, and monitoring features that unmanaged switches lack. Among the most important are two key IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) features for managing audio packets: IGMP Snooping and an IGMP Querier.