----- Original Message ----- > From: "Brooks Whiteford" <[email protected]>
> If you're finding dropouts are common during big data transfers, perhaps a > new network switch is in order. We didn't have a lot of cash to spend, but > an enterprise grade Cisco switch has made network issues a thing of the > past. The implications underneath this point to something that's always sort of irritated me. <rant> I've only worked in a live-to-air facility once; a cable TV sales network. But even there, in the truly miserable, amateur plant I got handed, I always treated the air path as sacred, and did everything I could to make it as reliable as possible. If you're running Rivendell live-to-air (and by this, I mean that R proper is playing live to air, not that you're not in full-automation mode)... *The LAN it's connected to is part of your airchain*. *You have to treat it that way*. People are shaking their heads at me now, but it appears that this is *not* a message from Captain Obvious: 1) Is there anything on that physical switch besides the Rivendell servers and workstations? 2) Do you have dual Ethernets in each machine? 3) Is that switch on its own long-runtime UPS or protected tech power? 4) Are the Ethernet cables a different color? (Usually, red is reserved for your unfirewalled public IP connection, but it's probably still the best choice, here. Or magenta, if you can find it.) I understand that part of the point is that Rivendell is "free", but free means as little here -- or less -- than it does in any other environment where you can get FOSS software to replace commercial stuff. There is, I have found, a tendency to forget that network engineers spent as much time learning our trade as you studio and RF engineers did learning yours, and we can't pick yours up in 6 months anymore than you can pick up ours. [ On re-reading, that sounds unnecessarily combative, but I can't think of a better way to phrase it; please don't take it personally, Any Given Reader. :-} ] The biggest offender here, amusingly, is Broadcast Engineering magazine, which regularly publishes IP networking articles which were clearly written by people who don't have the first (or occasionally, second or third) clue what they're talking about, and mislead their broadcast engineer readers into thinking they've become experts. Well, perhaps it's slightly easier to pick up the first 30% of network engineering than it is RF engineering, but that last 70% is critical. But I don't mean to go off on a </rant> or anything. :-) Cheers, -- jr 'apologies to Fred for the noise' a -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink [email protected] Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA #natog +1 727 647 1274 _______________________________________________ Rivendell-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.rivendellaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/rivendell-dev
