So do people think my plan to use a dedicated switch for all my roon endponts is a worthwhile way to do so as to avoid having the general houses traffic congesting the switch ? I would have one switch for all my roon endpints. This switch would then hang off my main house switch through which the rest of the house is networked including a few wireless acces points hanging off the main switch as well as my NAS. That way the switch handling the roon traffic would be less “busy” with non roon traffic.
I admit that I am not a network engineer but it seems sensible. ??
I don’t think it will make much difference. I have gigabit switches cascaded, and everything throughputs pretty well. Worth a try if you’re having issues.
Haven’t seen one of those in about 10 years. It may be starting to show its age (or even starting to break, tests would be needed).
Let me rephrase to “a nice, current, unmanaged switch from any reputable networking vendor”
you are unlikely to have any type of network congestion with wired switched Ethernet unless you are routinely moving a large number of HD video files around your network. Audio (even HD audio) is relatively low bitrate and would not trouble even a 100Mbit switched network feeding multiple endpoints simultaneously (16/44.1 CD raw bitrate is 1.4Mb/s I believe, from memory).
Roon endpoints use buffering in any case, to minimise the chance of network issues causing interruptions.
If you spend more than $20 on a 8 port desktop gigabit switch, then you are wasting money that could be better spent on music.
With current network speeds it doesn’t particularly matter if you stay within one switch, although if you do all the network traffic for those connected devices will stay in that switch. I daisy chain all of my switches off one another and off one of my rack mounted switches. The important thing is to use a switch and not the ports on the router.
I have four various D-Link Managed Switches throughout the house. (DGS-1100-08, DGS-1210-10, DGS-1100-05, DGS-1210-10P). All were working fine with Roon until a Roon upgrade many months ago when I started to receive many Roon dropouts and Roon Network Connectivity Error Messages.
After reading various comments on this Community Forum I removed all Jumbo Frames on every device including pcs, NUCs, Synology DSs and an Asus RT AC-68U Router throughout my network.
My Roon Core host is connected to a switch HP PS-1810 8G (8 ports 10/100/1000) with VLANs defined. One of its 10/100/1000 ports is connected to a 10/100/100 port of my old Cisco 2960 (24 port 10/100 + 2 ports 10/100/1000), again with VLANs defined. In a 10/100 ports of the Cisco 2960, I have connected a RPi3 with DietPi that runs my Roon Bridge, that is connected by means of USB to my DAC. Roon Core upsamples to DSD128 and this stream goes to the Roon Bridge with no problem at all.
Honestly, I can’t see where can be the problem with using a managed switch nor a Cisco switch.
I’m running 5 UniFi switch 8’s 4 cascaded from the main switch and all managed, but no VLAN’ and no issues. I use a UniFi USG 3P router and UniFi AC Pro wifi.
I know networks…and have setup many including VLAN’s in this environment.
As Danny says networks can be tricky when you need to split things up but for a normal house environment short of guest wifi a basic single subnet is all most homes would ever need.
Im not saying you are wrong, but how did you reach that conclusion? Extensive testing? And how do you know what i think is a good return on investment?
That statement contains a lot of “facts” that is at the very least debatable…
@xxx did not present facts… he presented his opinion, just as I am about to do here. I’m not sure his comment was very useful to this thread, but it does not deserve the CIA level probe.
I however will answer your probe as I mostly agree with the comment you are interrogating:
The Roon Team has done extensive testing for many years, and also has experience with a multitude of home networks, mostly in the context of streaming audio in homes ranging from studio apartments to palaces. This experience was gained beginning in the pre-Sooloos days, when home networks were not a common thing, up to now.
Our experience has let us to believe, that while you can come up with antecedal evidence that something works in a certain situation by a certain person, the way to have less problems is to buy a simple 10/100/1000mbps unmanaged switch, and 8 ports is a good number for most to start with. You can get products that fit that description, work as advertised and have reasonable longevity for under $50. Adding complications and more complicated technology here has shown to add problems, with no benefit to most (but not all) use cases.
@Vorno’s comment above is an example of this. By using a simple unmanaged switch, the experience of having things break with jumbo frames enabled would not have been an option. Jumbo frames should work, and they can be made to work, but the reality is that you must enable jumbo frames in a controlled environment where everything is speaking jumbo frames. For someone that does not absolutely require managed switch features such as monitoring, segmentation, and traffic shaping, should avoid them. Most homes do not require these features.
So while $20 is a stretch, the spirit of @xxx’s statement is something that you’d struggle to contest with.
When giving advice, antecedal experiences are helpful to the advice taker, in that they help build a model of statistical relevance. That’s also why some advice is better than others. I would argue our team’s experience is modern and a statistically interesting viewpoint on the world of home networks in regards to streaming audio, thus making it good advice… but then again, I’m biased to think I’m right
I’ve stated this above, and I’ll do it again: Router’s just have simple unmanaged switches internally. Feel free to avoid them if you want, but to represent it is as “important” or having some type of advantage is just incorrect.
Yes, this is probably the best advice on this thread!
It’s why I suggest starting with 8 ports even if you could be fine with a 4-5 port switch.
Didn’t mean to say they have an advantage, as far as Roon goes. It’s just that by staying in a switch or switches one doesn’t go back to router, which might make a difference with intra-network file serving, i.e. backups. Also, just as a superstition, I don’t like using routers for anything but internet connections. No pratical reason.
My original entry point into this post. I have 3 for several years, never had a problem with any.
Anyway, thanks for bringing some sanity into this post, even tho you deleted my original response to @Mikael_Ollars.
He is wise, our @danny
I did see your response! And as i said, i didnt claim you were wrong. On the other hand neither you or i was actually contributing to the thread. Sorry bout that!
Your latest post however is all good advice! Appreciated!
Me, i am using HP Procurve switches (One 1700-8 and one 1400-8G) which cost a lot more than $20 a piece when new. They have been installed since i moved into this apartment 10years ago and i think they have been restarted about 15times, when going on vacation or perhaps at a power outage or two. Otherwise they are functioning without a flaw. And i am doing backup at over 100MB/sec at the same time as streaming DSD128 on another port without any hickup.
I also use my Asus RT-N66U ports for one or two endpoints which i havent had any issues with either.
Well, here is another audiofool chiming in and (horrible, horrible) using anecdotal evidence to suggest that there are audible differences in ethernet switches. I understand all of the IT wizards pounding their drums and gathering for the kill because bits is bits and as long as the packets get through then nothing else makes a dollar’s worth of difference. Excuse me for disagreeing.
My belief, based on listening to my system and those others that I have spent significant time with, is that the better your system the more the little things make an appreciable difference. So, I replaced my Netgear Prosafe Gigabit switch with an outrageously expensive (bought over the internet from Germany) Aqvox ethernet switch - which is a modified D-link - and am pleased with the upgrade.
I would only recommend buying this for those who have done most of the other useless things like buying a great dac, using a fanless pc running an optimized version of Windows for their Roon Server, using HQPlayer (or whatever software you find the best and tuning it well), a microRendu or equivalent device between their server and dac, optical ethernet devices between the switch and the renderer, good or better ethernet cables (I like Wireworld and Audioquest, - what an idiot I am) and good or better power supplies across the board.
Have you tried powering your network components with linear power supplies? Or grounding them with, say, Entreq products?
And, would you consider your switch switch (!?) worth the investment compared to other possible tweaks, such as improved cabling, supports etc?
