Network Basics FAQs

Dante is a network solution built on standard network protocols and designed to work over a Local Area Network.

If you are planning on deploying Dante over longer Distances, there are some things regarding the network topology that will need to be considered. These are:

Network Routing design

• The distant locations might be part of the same VLAN or be on different routed Network Subnets.
• If the distant locations are on different routed subnets, the use of Dante Domain Manager (DDM) will be mandatory.

Network Propagation Time (Latency)

• This is the average time it takes for the packets to get from location A to location B on the network.

• Network Latency is going to be compensated by the Dante devices thanks to the Device Latency setting:

– Under “Unmanaged” Dante Networks the maximum available Latency is 5ms for Hardware Dante devices and 10ms for Software implementations (like DVS or VIA)

– Under DDM managed networks the maximum latency can be increased to 20ms or 40ms on Hardware Dante devices only depending on the Dante implementation they are using.

Network Jitter

• This is time delta variance for network packets traveling between the locations.
• This is going to have a direct impact on the Dante clocking mechanism which is PTP based.
• If the jitter is too high, the Dante devices will lose sync and mute. This can be the case over encrypted VPN links or locations connected with intermediate firewalls.

– Dante Hardware implementations will have jitter tolerances up to around 250us.

– Dante Software implementations are more tolerant and can go up to 1ms of jitter. This is mainly due to some OS not supporting PTP Hardware Time-stamping.

• Jitter on the network can be improved by the implementation of QoS but it might not be sufficient in some cases.
• We recommend using PTPv2 capable GPS clocks on the different locations to break the clocking dependency between sites. DDM will be required for creating multiple Clocking Zones over the different locations Subnets.

Packet Loss

• Dante assumes that there are no packet loss on the network (which is usually the case over a LAN) and has no recovery mechanisms to cope against this.
• This will result in audio artefacts because of Audio Sample loss.
• Links over the Public Internet are inherently prone to packet loss.

Our general recommendation is to use dark fibre or Private Links between the different locations in order to have control over the parameters described above.

Locations linked using VPN over the Public Internet will likely fail to achieve Dante Over Distance.

Hardware devices work hard to ensure that the high-priority, high-rate traffic is spread out time-wise.

DVS and Via are software-based, and thus subject to scheduling jitter. If/when scheduling is delayed, they could end up sending a burst of large packets through the network.

We decided not to QoS tag these packets to avoid having high-priority traffic “bursting” through the network.

Any additional delays in the network caused by not using QoS are assimilated into the overall latency budget.

Dante is built as a plug-and-play technology. This means that it should be possible to connect Dante devices through switches without the need for any specific switch configurations.

Should it be deemed that features such as IGMP and QoS are required within a Dante network, the following guide provides examples for enabling these features Cisco SG350 Configuration Guide

For alternative switches, please refer to the product manual for your specific switch type.

Ports, URLs and Servers listed below:

• General Dante Ports
  • External
  • Internal
• Dante Application Library
• Dante Via
• Dante Virtual Soundcard
• Dante Updater
• Dante Domain Manager
• Dante Firmware Updater
• Dante Firmware Activation (Broadway, IP Core)
• Dante Studio

General Dante Ports

Dante Studio

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Testing under heavy load conditions has indicated that an Ultimo-based leader clock can support at least 40 follower clock devices before synchronization issues may begin to manifest. Thus, dedicated Ultimo-only networks of up to ~40 devices should operate well under most load conditions.

A range of other network conditions may however affect the performance of the network, such as high multicast traffic, and the presence of non-Dante network traffic.

QoS can be configured on your switches to prioritise PTP clock packets over audio packets. The use of QoS will increase the number of devices that can be supported on an Ultimo-only network (see this FAQ for more information about using QoS for Dante networks).

Also, the inclusion in your network of a Brooklyn II, Broadway, Dante HC, Dante PCIe or Dante-MY16-AUD/2 device to act as leader clock will significantly increase the number of devices that can be supported in the network.

As a rule of thumb, total bandwidth utilisation (including multicast and unicast) on any given link should not exceed 70% of the supported bandwidth for any link.

Utilisation above 70% of supported bandwidth can adversely impact clock synchronization (especially if there is also non-Dante traffic on the network).

(Windows only)

Dante Discovery is an Audinate service that Dante software uses on Windows platforms to discover Dante-enabled devices on the network. It is installed automatically with newer Dante software applications, and for those applications it takes over the role of the previously used discovery service, Apple Bonjour.

The service needs to be running for Dante software to work. If the service stops, you can restart it via Task Manager > Services tab > Services button (bottom right).

If the service stops regularly:

1. Uninstall Dante Controller.
2. Uninstall Dante Discovery.
3. Re-install Dante Controller.

Note:  Other Dante software applications (such as DVS) rely on Dante Discovery, and will not function while the service is uninstalled.

Note:  Do not uninstall Apple Bonjour – it is still required by older Audinate applications.

Note:  On OS X, the Apple Bonjour service is installed as part of the OS X operating system.

The standard firewalls that are installed with Windows and OS X are automatically configured by Dante software at installation.

However, if you are using a third-party firewall and/or need to manually enable ports and applications, please refer to this FAQ.

Yes, you can configure static IP addresses for one or both of the Ethernet ports (for supported devices), via the Network Config tab of the Device View for the device.

However, by default, Dante devices obtain IP addresses automatically – so there should be no need to specify static IP addresses, unless it is a specific requirement for your network.

More info

No. While possible in principle, the practical limitations of current wireless technology (802.11a/b/g/n/ac) render reliable audio performance, with ultra-low latency unachievable. For this reason, Dante Virtual Soundcard and Dante Via will not recognize wireless connections for audio data.

However, you can use Dante Controller to control and configure the Dante network over a Wi-Fi connection. Dante Controller must be version 3.10 or higher for Wi-Fi support.

To enable this feature:

1. Open the Configure Dante Interfaces dialog.
2. Uncheck ‘Use shared Dante interface’.
3. Select your wireless adapter.

The wireless adaptor must be connected to the Dante network.

Dante uses standard Voice over IP (VoIP) Quality of Service (QoS) switch features to prioritize clock sync and audio traffic over other network traffic. QoS is available in many inexpensive and enterprise Ethernet switches. Any switch that supports Diffserv (DSCP) QoS with strict priority and 4 queues, and has Gigabit ports for inter-switch connections should be appropriate for use with Dante.

See this FAQ for information about DSCP/Diffserv values.

No. To ensure that this is always the case, switches in your network should have QoS enabled using common VoIP settings.

Yes, the audio can be sent over the same network as control information, and even unrelated data traffic.

Yes, but all Ethernet switches support multicast. Dante doesn’t need special multicast features from switches and is designed to work efficiently with advanced multicast features like IGMP Snooping.

More info

Multicast and unicast can be used simultaneously on a Dante device. Channels are individually selectable for multicast transmission.

More info

When a particular audio channel or group of audio channels is being sent to multiple receivers (typically three or more) then it is a more efficient use of available network bandwidth to send a single multicast packet to many receivers than to send individual packets with identical payloads to each receiver.

More info

The audio packets can be transmitted using either unicast addressing or multicast addressing. By default they are sent using unicast addressing, but the user can change this to multicast using the Dante Controller.

More info

No. Unlike other many other audio networking protocols, no special network infrastructure is required. Since Dante is based upon universally accepted networking standards, Dante-enabled devices can be connected using inexpensive off-the-shelf Ethernet switches and cabling.

Audio is transmitted over the network in IP Packets (UDP/IP.) A single IP packet may contain audio samples from several audio channels, and may contain multiple audio samples for each channel.

No. Dedicated network infrastructure is not required. Dante-enabled devices can happily co-exist on an existing converged data network. Dante, VoIP, and email traffic can all transmit across your business network together.

No. however we strongly recommend that Gigabit switches be used due to the clear advantages in performance and scalability. Please refer to our FAQ page regarding switches.