Designing Campus-Wide

Dante Systems
A Simple Hybrid Classroom – What are we trying to do?

Absolutely Need to Have:

• Professor audio
• Class content
Good to have:
• Visual of the Professor
• In room and remote students can hear and see each other
Nice to have:
• Connection to remote lecture capture
• Monitoring System
2 Designing a Campus-wide Dante System
A Simple Hybrid Classroom – What gear do we need?

• PC with UC Client
• USB to Dante Device for PC audio in/out
• Microphones for picking up professor and in room students
• Speakers - content playback and interaction with remote participants
• DSP – microphone processing/mixing and distribution to speakers
• Cameras – USB or IP?
• Professor
• In Room Students?
• Displays/Projectors/Doc Cams
• Class Content
• Remote Students?
• Monitor for Professor
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A Simple Hybrid Classroom – Physical Connections

Designing a Campus-wide Dante System

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Hybrid Classroom – Physical Connections

5 Designing a Campus-wide Dante System

Logical Routing Dante Controller

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Using Dante Controller Presets

• Easily return rooms to a known working state

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Don’t Build Islands of Technology

Flexible Goes the Distance

Scalable Manageable

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 How Are Dante Devices Addressed?

Dynamic Static

DHCP Link-Local

DHCP Server Sure have

192.168.1.109

Is anyone using
169.254.10.134?

Can I have an
IP address?

9 Designing a Campus-wide Dante System

How Devices Get Discovered (Without DDM)

• Dante uses mDNS to discover devices on the network

• Devices send unsolicited mDNS responses messages
when they come online so they are immediately
discovered by Dante Controller

I’m Online!
Subscribing to
Hey Devices! 224.0.0.251:5353
Subscribe to
224.0.0.251:5353

*Note: The Dante API takes over to get more details about devices

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Dante On Your Network – Audio Bandwidth

• Dante Audio is unicast by default but can be set to use multicast for
cases of one-to-many distribution
• Audio is packaged into flows to save on network overhead
• Unicast audio flows contain up to 4 channels.
• Samples-per-channel can vary between 4 and 64 dependent on latency

• Bandwidth usage is about 6 mbps per typical unicast audio flow

• @ 48k/24bit

• Bandwidth for multicast flows is dependent on the number of audio

channels in the flow
• Each channel is about 1.5 mbps

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Unicast vs. Multicast Flows

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Dante On Your Network– Dante Video Bandwidth

• Video bandwidth depends on resolution, frame rate, chroma

sampling, and color bit depth used and varies with content shown
Resolution Chroma Frame Rate Bit Depth Bandwidth

4K 4:4:4 60 10 911 mbps

4K 4:2:2 60 10 675 mbps

4K 4:4:4 30 10 506 mbps

4K 4:2:2 30 10 337 mbps

1080p 4:4:4 60 10 253 mbps

1080p 4:2:2 60 10 135 mbps

1080p 4:4:4 30 10 126 mbps

1080p 4:2:2 30 10 85 mbps

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 Dante On Your Network – Synchronization

• Dante uses Precision Time Protocol (PTP) for time synchronization

• By default, Dante uses PTP v1
• This generates a few small packets a few times per second
• One clock leader is elected on a per subnet basis
• Leader sends sync and follow up messages to followers
• Followers send delay requests to determine network delay
• Follower devices can be configured with unicast delay requests
• A clock leader can keep about 250 devices in sync*

• If switches have PTP settings, it’s best to “disable PTP” on ports or network
segments with Dante devices so the traffic is forwarded as normal multicast
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Dante On Your Network – Multicast Management

• Dante implements IGMP v2 or v3

• One IGMP Querier should be elected per VLAN
• Query intervals should be short
• Leave time-out values long
• IGMP is not a requirement for Dante audio only networks with
few or no multicast audio flows
• IGMP is required if:
• IP video (including Dante Video) is on the same network segment
• Significant amounts of multicast audio are in use.

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 Dante On Your Network – Traffic Prioritization

• Dante as a real time media streaming service benefits from low

latency and jitter on the network
• QoS should be used for prioritization of Dante clock and audio on
mixed-use networks
• Required on networks with IP video including Dante AV!
• May see clock sync issues (especially with 100mb devices)
• Dante can make use of DiffServ QoS
Priority Usage DSCP Decimal
• Dante will tag packets High PTP (clock) CS7 56
• Must be configured with strict Medium Audio EF 46
priority queueing Low (reserved) CS1 8
• DSCP values can be re-marked None Other Traffic BestEffort 0

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 Dante On Your Network – Final Things

• Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) or Green Ethernet (IEEE

802.3az) should be disabled on all ports used for Dante traffic
• Results in poor synchronization and occasional audio dropouts

• Full list of ports Dante uses:

https://www.audinate.com/learning/faqs/which-network-
ports-does-dante-use

Always check manufacturer documentation as well!

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Managing Your Devices

So now we have a bunch of AV devices on the network

how do we maintain and support these systems?

Dante Domain Manager

Server based centralized
Dante network monitoring
and management

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Organizing Your Devices in Domains

• Dante devices can only be

enrolled in one domain
• Shared Audio Groups can be used
to share transmit channels from
devices to multiple domains
• Who do I want to have access
to these devices?
• Am I giving my users the ability
to enroll/unenroll devices from
domains?
• Devices once enrolled cannot
share audio back to the
unmanaged domain.
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Shared Audio Between Domains

• Temporary Shared Audio Streams:

• Audio form Sports Games or
Performances to broadcast studios
• Creating overflow rooms
• Permanent Shared Audio Streams
• Combined Clock Domains

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Designing a Campus-wide Dante System
Single Subnet DDM Systems

Discovery & Addressing options for single-

subnet systems:
• Link-local addressing + Dante Discovery
Service (mDNS)
• Static addressing + manual enrollment
• DHCP is convenient, but not required

• The mDNS discovery feature (Dante Discovery

Service) is on by default and does not need to
be activated or configured.
• Once enrolled in a domain devices no longer
respond to mDNS queries or send out
unsolicited mDNS responder messages
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Multi-Subnet DDM Systems

Discovery options for multi-subnet systems:

• DHCP and DNS-SD (recommended)
• Static addressing & manual enrollment
DDM

DHCP/DNS

ROUTER
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 DNS-SD (Service Discovery)

• Dante devices and controllers can use DNS-SD (Service

Discovery), when mDNS is not a viable option for discovery
• Each DNS-SD entry consists of an SRV record describing
how to connect to the DDM Server and a TXT record with
additional information

Where’s the You can find it at

DDM server? ddm.avtech.com
UDP port 8000
DNS

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Static Addressing & Manual Enrollment

• For Dante systems that span multiple subnets where

discovery with DNS-SD is not an option the devices can be
manually enrolled via their IP address.
• This is done either by typing in device IP address or
uploading a .csv file of IP addresses
• When you manually enroll a device in DDM, the DDM server
sends a static reference to the device.
Enroll in a domain,
the server is at
OK!
192.168.1.3
DDM

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Multi-Subnet Systems

Dante systems only allow unicast traffic to pass a router

What traffic does this affect?
• Control: Control data between the DDM server, Controller
and devices is sent unicast
• Discovery: Supports Unicast DNS or Manual Enrollment into
domains
• Clocking: For Domains or Shared Audio Groups that span
multiple subnets a device capable or becoming a unicast
boundary clock is required in each subnet
• Audio: When routing audio across subnets devices’ flow
counts should be taken into consideration
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Authorize Use of Dante Systems

• Require user login for

Dante Controller
• Credentials can be unique
for Dante or tied to existing
LDAP/Active Directory
• Authorize users for only
Dante Domains they
need and actions required

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Supporting Your Classrooms

Monitor System health via Dashboard, email, and SNMP

Connectivity
Clocking
Latency
Subscriptions
System

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 Keeping Track of it All - Audit Log

• Search the audit log by The audit log displays a timestamped

entering text in the list of user and device related events
search field
• Add Filter filters log
entries by user, domain,
device, and event
parameters
• Export to CSV to saves all
entries to a CSV file
• Clear Log to permanently
deletes all entries

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Inventory Management

• Export .csv file of all device

details for import into Inventory
Database
• When enrolling devices fill out
Device Info fields with serial # (or
other details) used for tracking

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Remote Audio Monitoring

• Single Subnet systems

Dante Via

• Multi-subnet systems
hardware device

• Flow count could be

an issue

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 Take-aways

• Transitioning to and using AVoIP is easier than you think!

• Putting Dante on the campus network is possible!

• Monitoring and Management of AV systems is a huge

benefit!

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 Q&A
Contact emails:
Help I have a problem! – [email protected]
I want to talk about Dante on my campus, system
design, doing a case study, etc –
[email protected]

32 Designing a Campus wide Dante System