Follow-Me & Network Switches
Knowledge base article
The network switches Follow-Me can use will be a multitude of brands and costs, all with differing features, manageability and other factors.
We generally recommend using unmanaged switches where possible, but of course in most productions or installations this is rarely done. With managed switches, more control is offered, but therefore more complexity. Poorly designed networks can result in dropped packets and/or unstable connections, so of course all switches play a vital role to achieve a solid network.
PoE switches are needed in order to power the Mouse/Fader console sets and additionally the Anchors in Follow-Me Track-iT. From the PoE perspective, you just need to ensure the ports have the power capacity for the Mouse & Fader consoles (around 10W per set) and up to 8 daisy-chained Anchors (One Anchor consumes less than 2W).
At Follow-Me we don’t offer recommendations on a brand or model. But, we do offer help and advice or how these more managed switches should be configured.
Advice
Generally, Auto-negotiation should be turned off. Auto-negotiation is the feature that allows a port on a switch, router, server, or other device to communicate with the device on the other end of the link to determine the optimal duplex mode and speed for the connection. The duplex mode decides whether there is constant simultaneous transmitting/receiving of data, or one direction at a time.
Making sure that both sides of the link are configured the same way is essential for auto-negotiation to work, hence why we advise turning it off as the two ends are unlikely to be configured the same.
Generally, IGMP Snooping should be carefully considered if using. IGMP Snooping is a protocol used by switches to listen in on Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) traffic. IGMP is a protocol used by hosts and adjacent routers to manage multicast group memberships. Multicast traffic is traffic that is sent from a single source to multiple destinations simultaneously.
IGMP snooping works by listening in on IGMP messages sent between multicast-enabled devices on the network. This information is used by the switch to forward multicast traffic to only those devices that are interested in receiving it. IGMP snooping is commonly used in local area networks (LANs) where multicast traffic is present. It can help reduce congestion and improve network performance, and therefore helps avoid each device being flooded with excess data.
However, IGMP can potentially add many more points of failure into a network if not configured correctly. So, extensive networking knowledge is needed for it to work as designed.
For example – A Luminex Gigacore 14R and its settings that can sometimes have to be altered to enable Follow-Me to work on the network as intended –
‘Group’ tab – Disable IGMP Snooping
‘Global’ tab > ‘Device Settings’ – Enable IGMP unknown flood state
We typically see turning IGMP Snooping off can solve issues. But it should be turned off for all ports and all VLAN’s.
Note – Turning IGMP Snooping off or disabling it may allow Follow-Me to work as intended. But it will mean data that was once multicast will now be broadcast. So all devices on the network get the information they need/expect, but also (potentially) an enormous amount of data they do not need/expect. If the device isn’t able to handle this bottleneck of data, it could potentially crash.
For another example – The Netgear AV range of switches have similar and even more options to toggle on or off. Here disabling ‘Admin Mode’ has been seen to solve issues too –
Other considerations
Some switches have a DDoS protection (Distributed denial of service) feature that could see Art-Net and sACN as a DDoS attack if the universe count is large (20+ universes).
Some switches have EEE capability (Energy Efficient Ethernet), an EEE-enabled device initiates Low Power Idle (LPI) signals to negotiate and wake up the remote device when there is data to be transmitted. It is best to disable this feature.
Have a great install & reach out to us if you need help!
Your Follow-Me team.