Subscriber Discussion

Thoughts On Network Switches Geared Towards The A/V Market

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Sep 20, 2016

I guess Luxul might be the most well known but there are others like Pakedge and Araknis.  They are marketed more towards the AV market.  Their specs show that they have a very high throughput and are made to stream HD video with audio over ethernet, music, IP cameras, and data for homes, bars, restaurants, etc.  Some of them have some nice features like a mobile app to manage it, automatic alerts if it goes down and even the ability to power cycle an individual port on the switch.  

Has anybody been using these successfully? 

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Brian Karas
Sep 20, 2016
IPVM

While you may have issues with a total "bottom of the barrel" no-brand switch, you really should not require a specialty switch for those applications. Many switches these days are based on common chipsets, and often times even have capabilities that are in the chipsets and just not accessible to the user/installer. As an example, here is a blog of a guy with hacks to enable advanced features on a no-name $20 switch: fiddling with a dumb switch.

The mobile app management and alerts sound like they could be valuable, and I would likely consider those as more significant than their throughput claims.

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Jon Dillabaugh
Sep 21, 2016
Pro Focus LLC

Usually, the A/V market wants ports in the back. If that isn't a desired feature, I don't know why you wouldn't stick with industry leaders (Cisco, HP, Netgear, etc.).

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Sep 21, 2016

They have them both ways with ports on the front vs the back. The nice thing is that I can pick up my phone right now and in 5 seconds see every port on the switch, a label of what is plugged into the port (camera name), if it is up or down, its' power consumption, and just a tap to re-power the port. I can see the switch up time, overall POE power utilization and can reboot the entire switch all from the app. Pretty powerful to be able be able to do that without having to login to the remote site via remote desktop or other remote service. Security of the app is a concern for me though.

I'm going to put a few of them out there and see what happens. Worst case is I'll know exactly when it fails via the app. I will get a notification on my phone if I go over and pull the plug right now.

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Jon Dillabaugh
Sep 21, 2016
Pro Focus LLC

And just think people around here are scared that a camera is on their network. Imagine the switch is the compromised device...

Half joking, but I am unsure I would want that type of data floating in an app. It seems like a novel idea, but most of the reporting stuff can be done with SNMP and email/text messaging. It's not like seconds count when dealing with a switch outage. Hours and days, sure, but the difference in knowing in seconds or minutes isn't going to be critical. And if it is that critical, you shouldn't consider a product from an out of industry vendor.

And maybe a lot of this criticism stems from my interactions with Luxul at the ADI Expo. Their product seems like really overpriced and outdated to me. They just now started making 48 port switches. It was their bragging point at the Expo. That says a whole lot to me.

UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #2
Sep 21, 2016

U1,

what products are you testing? Disclosure: I am a Luxul rep. You should take a look at the Domotz product (soon to be offered in Luxul routers), it's a pretty handy remote network health/management tool. I am currently testing their raspberry pi solution and I like what I see! (Sorry for the plug, but IPVM should do an evaluation of Domotz, in my opinion)

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