M4250 FW Update Results in changed default behavior.
Greetings. We are running a large fleet of M4250 switches in an AV event environment. Using Netgear's "out of the box" functionality (their advertising terminology, not mine), we have had no issues running Dante, Clearcom, Video codecs and general network traffic such as Shure's Wireless Workbench. We do not mix this traffic but each type gets its own switches and fiber link. This simplifies deployment, requires no advanced switch configs and eliminates surprises created by incorrect configs on job sites.
For network traffic that requires advanced set ups like AVB, we dedicated switches to this task that are configured and labeled for that task only.
Beginning with firmware 13.0.4.19 this has been a successful set up. We use Fiber SFPs to link multiple switches in multiple locations. There is no advanced setup being applied by us. This is "out of the box" functionality. We do not mix traffic types.
Recently we upgraded to firmware 13.0.4.26. This "out of the box" functionality has stopped worked. Without configuration, the ability to handle Dante traffic within a single switch requires setting up the Dante profile. Moving this traffic between switches does not work. This has effectively stopped our ability to use this set up as we have for the last year.
We are not looking to do highly configured switch profiles but prefer the "unmanaged style" switch behavior that we had from the M4250 from the beginning.
QUESTIONS:
1. What changed between the .19 and .26 firmware versions that has changed the switches fundamental "out of the box" functionality?
2. Is there a way to regain this with the updated firmware via settings that don't seem to be obvious?
3. Will regressing the firmware back to .19 or earlier, get us back to the switch behavior we are looking for? Is there additional set up needed after that to get to Netgear's "out of the box" functionality.
