AVoIP Multicast Switch Configuration

This will provide a general overview of required multicast configuration for a VLAN containing AVoIP video encoders and decoders as well as Dante networked audio. The concepts here should be applicable to any Layer 3 managed switches.

 
 

Swtich prequisites

  • Network switch provides Gigabit ports for all AVoIP devices

  • Network switch supports a non-blocking architecture

  • Jumbo frames disabled

  • Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) is disabled for ports with AVoIP devices

  • EEE/Green Ethernet is disabled for ports with AVoIP devices

  • DSCP-based QoS support

Multicast configuration

  • Enable Bridge Multicast Filtering or equivalent on the VLAN where multicast traffic will be present

  • For the Forwarding Method, choose IP Group Address (if applicable)

  • Filter Unregistered Multicast on all ports

  • Add these Multicast addresses to the Forwarding Database to allow unregistered audio traffic and mDNS to pass for discovery

    • 224.0.0.230-224.0.0.233: Dante Discovery and Metering

    • 224.0.0.251: mDNS for Device Discovery (also known as Bonjour)

    • 224.0.1.129: PTP Clocking--both PTPv1 for Dante and PTPv2 for AES67

    • 239.255.254.253: Shure Control, for Software Update Utility

    • 239.255.255.255: Session Announcement Protocol, to announce AES67 streams

  • Disable Forwarding of Multicast traffic unless there are multiple switches in the deployment

    • In this scenario, enable Multicast traffic forwarding only on the uplink port to the other switches

    • If this is the case, ensure that the uplink ports support enough bandwidth for the amount of traffic being forwarded between switches

  • Disable Multicast Storm Control

IGMP Configuration

  • Enable IGMP Snooping on the VLAN

    • IGMPv2 is the preferred version

  • Enable IGMP Querier on the Primary switch

    • Set the Querier IP address to the switches IP on the VLAN

  • Set the IGMP Querier interval to the lowest possible setting (ideally this is 30 seconds)

  • Enable Fast Leave on all Multicast ports

QoS configuration

Set up the following DSCP values on the switch. Set all other DSCP values to the lowest possible priority or “Best Effort”

DSCP56 (CS7) - HIGHEST

  • Dante clock traffic

  • AES67 clock traffic from a Dante device running Dante firmware 3.x

DSCP46 (EF, or Expedited Forwarding) - SECOND HIGHEST

  • Dante audio traffic (unicast and multicast)

  • AES67 audio traffic from a Dante device running Dante firmware 3.x

  • AES67 clock traffic from a Dante device running Dante firmware 4.x*

  • AES67 clock traffic from most AES67 standard-compliant devices

DSCP34 (AF41) - THIRD HIGHEST

  • AES67 audio traffic from a Dante device running Dante firmware 4.x*

  • AES67 audio traffic from most AES67 standard-compliant devices