M4300 Stacking, SDVoE Network and IGMP Failure

Hi brabinowitz ,

Thank you for your message. This is not a bug, it's simply misconfiguration. Please download the tech-support files out of the switches (IT GUI; Maintenance; Export' HTTP File Export; tech-support in the dropdown menu, click Apply). Please send the tech-support files to ProAVDesign@netgear.com with a link to this post. One of us will help you fix it.

Stacking is not the best practice because all the multicast present on one switch is "sent" through the stack links to the other switches, by design.  While it is OK to stack two core switches with enough capacity in between the stack links for the entire multicast present on the network (need to do the math and select switches with enough uplinks), it is rather an issue in your case with 10G video between M4300-96X's - unless you populate half the slots with 40G port cards for symmetric capacity.

So what you need here is IGMP Plus, letting the switches "standalone" without stacking. With IGMP Plus, no flooding, and only the subscribed traffic will flow between the switches.

Switches should be un-stacked first in your network. Stacking ports should be turned to Ethernet mode and in each switch previously stacked, the other units should be "deleted".

When you have the three switches standalone, you should upgrade them to the latest firmware: https://www.netgear.com/support/product/m4300#download

After reboot, using still the IT main GUI (as I guess the AV UI wasn't used in this install), you should go to Switching\LAG and enable the Auto-LAG Admin Mode. Please apply, and save the configuration using the disk icon (upper right). 

Just in case, go next to Switching\VLAN\/Advanced\VLAN Trunking Configuration and enable the Global Auto-Trunk admin mode. Click apply, and save the config.

Now, you can interconnect the three switches with as many links you need between them, considering one switch as you core switch, and connecting the two other switches to it.

The ports will form LAGs dynamically after a few seconds.

Of course, it ould be wise to finally go to Switching\Mutlicast\IGMP Snooping, and verify that IGMP Plus is enabled in \Configuration; that you don't have any "Admin mode" enabled at the port level in \Interface Configuration - instead you want to have IGMP Plus enabled for each VLAN in \IGMP Snooping VLAN Configuration.

I hope this will help; of course as I said, feel free to email ProAVDesign@netgear.com for any help.

A more radical (and better solution) would be to factory default the three switches after the FW upgrade, and use this time the AV User Interface to configure them (with Auto-LAG and Auto-Trunk enabled). All three could be even configured at once using the NETGEAR Engage Controller (www.netgear.com/engage-download .

Thank you, L

Then,