Audio-over-IP bandwidth
Channels, packet time and protocol → per-direction link bandwidth for Dante, AES67, Q-LAN and AVB.
All four carry uncompressed PCM, but channels-per-flow and packet time decide how much header overhead rides along. Enter TX and RX channel counts, pick the protocol and packet time, and see the busier direction against a 1/2.5/10 GbE port — plus flow counts, Dante flow limits, and the switch settings (IGMP, DSCP, no EEE) that keep it working.
Ethernet is full duplex — TX and RX each get the full link. The result compares the busier direction against the port; a 32-in/32-out device is 32 channels, not 64.
▸ Healthy headroom. Gigabit is the floor for any audio-over-IP device regardless of channel count — the win here is room for growth and shared traffic, not a smaller port.
- ▸ Audinate Dante — the most common AV-over-IP audio transport. Unicast flows carry up to 4 channels each; multicast flows up to 8.
- ▸ Clock sync: PTPv1 (Dante domain) · PTPv2 in AES67 / Dante Domain Manager modes
- ▸ Gigabit non-blocking ports; managed switch on anything beyond a single rack.
- ▸ Multicast: enable IGMP snooping and an IGMP querier on the audio VLAN, or every port floods every stream.
- ▸ DSCP QoS trusted on ingress: PTP clock at EF (46), audio at AF41 (34), strict-priority queue for PTP.
- ▸ Disable Energy Efficient Ethernet (802.3az / “green ethernet”) — its wake-up latency wrecks PTP.
Dante TX over 1 GbE — fill shows how much of the busier direction this device uses; each stripe is one channel (capped at 64).