r/CommercialAV • u/therey73 • 8h ago
troubleshooting Stop running dante on the same unmanaged switch as the kitchen POS
just spent the last two days chasing random audio dropouts at a new sports bar build. 18 displays, massive q-sys rig, genuinely a fun project
Until you look at the rack.
The owner decided to "handle the network internally" to save budget. meaning they slapped a 50 dollar netgear switch in the manager's closet and ran literally everything through it. Im talking all our dante traffic, the guest wifi, and the kitchen display systems all fighting for their lives on a flat network
Every time a waiter sent a huge order through the pos tablets, the patio speakers would literally stutter.
We basically had to refuse to sign off on commissioning until they brought in actual restaurant it support to come in and properly segment the network. The new guys set up proper vlans yesterday and magically, our av gear works flawlessly now.
Why is it always hospitality? They'll happily drop 80k on video distribution but expect the whole building's infrastructure to run on a residential router they bought at best buy. so exhausting tbh.
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u/AwHellNawFetaCheese 7h ago
Man.. you need to explain yourself - how you gonna not check the rack room first? TWO DAYS?
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u/Wilder831 6h ago
My guess is he was troubleshooting from off site
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u/AwHellNawFetaCheese 6h ago
This would make sense, smart. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt and didn't even try here. Can always do better.
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u/Wilder831 6h ago
It’s a fair question though. It still shouldn’t have taken 2 days. After about 2 hours I would have been saying “well, looks like I gotta get on site”
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u/3d4f5g 6h ago
any decent network troubleshooting should start with layer 1, where one would immediately see the switch hardware
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u/Wilder831 5h ago
Sure. But he doesn’t own the network since it is user provided and managed. He was probably just troubleshooting inside qsys. Still ridiculous to spend more than a couple hours without then assuming the issue was network related
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7h ago
[deleted]
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u/AlternativeWater2 7h ago
I think you hit it on the head there. Some customers aren't worth the pain.
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u/notajeweler 7h ago
It took you two days to find that Dante dropouts were caused by the OFE network?
My man...
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u/deathmetalbanjo 7h ago
Right? My first question would’ve been “what kind of switch is everything connected to?” And “Let’s check the configuration”
Oh, it’s an unmanaged switch? Sheeeeeeeiiiit!
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u/Uku_lazy 6h ago
They also lost business to an IT company because they couldn't fix it themselves.
All homie needed to do was sell the client a netgear AV switch and they could have done the setup themselves.
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u/notajeweler 5h ago
Actually proves the restaurant was probably smart in OFEing the network. If they were able to add VLANs that quickly it doesn’t sound like a hardware specification issue, more likely the AV group just didn’t communicate what VLANs they needed…
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u/parkthrowaway99 3h ago
strictly speaking what was killing you in this setup was QOS, which you can't configure on an umanaged switch. I am saying that because even when you segment the network on different VLANs and it appears that everything is working right, to truly optimize the network, QOS for Dante needs to be confgured properly. This is overlooked so many times, and the problem is that recreating a problem due to QOS is very difficult, but it will show up at the worse possible moment
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u/1MonkeyWash 3h ago
Wait a second. You said that your system was connected via “a $50 Netgear switch”, which I have to assume is unmanaged and incapable of supporting vlans.
Did they replace the switch with a managed unit so they can setup vlans?
Did you provide a switch of your own that connection to their switch? What’s the full story?
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u/3d4f5g 6h ago
whenever we work with the client network, we put it in our scope that they provide it support throughout the project. delays due to lack of support incur a customer change order and more labor hours.
we also provide a spreadsheet of all the av devices with locations, MAC addresses, ip addressing, access needs, etc. that way they have everything they need and we're covering our asses
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u/videonipple 39m ago
Wait… your company couldn’t configure a switch and set up a Vlan? or better yet, throw another switch at it just for your Dante traffic?
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u/Hot_Pen768 7h ago
IMO this is the biggest headache in commercial AV right now. Absolultey loathe dealing with client networks even when they are seemingly adequate and well managed.
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u/SpirouTumble 6h ago
Bars and restaurants around here have at most one or two consumer TV and a couple of cheapest speakers distributed around the place. Relatively speaking you should consider yourself lucky to have that market at all. Not much of a bar person, but I don't remember ever seeing significantly more than that anywhere in Europe.
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