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A-TownMatt's avatar
A-TownMatt
Follower
Jul 03, 2018

Stack or Trunk S3300 switches for AV network

I am designing the network infrastructure for a production facility who will be transporting audio via Dante, video via NDI, communication over IP (Clear-Com) and control system traffic over multiple VLANs on the network.  The facility has 6 locations for switches which we plan on outfitting with either an S3300-28X-PoE+ or S3300-52X-PoE+.  One room will be dedicated to video editing and will have a dual 10G NAS and dual 10G editing system.  There is also an audio editing room with 10G connected editing system.  Everything else will be 1G or 100Mb devices.  Each switch will have devices on all VLANs.  Most traffic will stay within each VLAN with some exceptions.  The goal is to provide high bandwidth for audio and video paths with the fewest hops for the lowest latency possible.

 

My first plan was to use a 10G SFP+/Copper switch as a central connection for 10G trunks from each switch.  The video editing room would have an MS510TX in addition to the S3300 which would connect the NAS and editing system.

 

The other idea is to use the stacking capability to stack the 6 S3300 switches using multi-mode fiber.  The video editing room's MS510TX would connect using the copper 10G ports.

 

It seems the stacking option would make configuration and management much easier, but I'm not familiar with the details of how it works to know if it will be the most efficient for latency and bandwidth.

2 Replies

  • JohnC_V's avatar
    JohnC_V
    NETGEAR Employee Retired

    Hi A-TownMatt,

     

    Welcome to our community! :)

     

    Stacking has better latency than setting up a trunk. It is working logically as a single switch even though you have multiple switches inside your network. Unlike setting up a trunk, it will still hop into another switch before it goes to another.

     

    Regards,

     

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