Show networks

Eight shows a week is a network spec.

Tracking, lighting, video and audio share one fabric on a modern rig. The network is the part nobody is supposed to notice, which is exactly why it gets designed rather than assembled.

The network

How the fabric is designed, built, and handed over.

VLAN design and multicast controlSegmenting show traffic into VLANs and keeping multicast contained, so one chatty device cannot take the whole fabric with it.IP addressing and subnet planningAn address scheme the crew can read, that survives gear swaps, and that does not collide with the house or the next building.PoE budgeting and power classesSizing Power over Ethernet against real device draw and real switch budgets, not against the number of ports on the front panel.Redundancy and failoverDeciding which failures the system must survive, then building redundancy at the layer that actually addresses them.Commissioning and documentationThe handover from a network that is installed to a network that is trusted, and the paperwork that keeps it that way.Wireless and spectrum coordinationWhere wireless belongs in a show system, what the room does to it, and why spectrum is coordinated across departments rather than per device.

What rides on it

The protocols that carry position and control across the fabric.

PosiStageNetAn open protocol for streaming tracked-object position data to consoles, media servers and show systems over IP.sACN and E1.31The ANSI standard for carrying DMX512-A control data over IP, universe-addressed, multicast by default, with source priority.RTTrPMBlackTrax's real-time tracking protocol for motion data, carrying trackable centroids, orientation and per-point detail over UDP.OTP and E1.59ANSI E1.59, the Object Transform Protocol: a standards-track way to transmit object position, rotation and related transform data over IP.Open Sound ControlA flexible message format for control and glue between systems, with no standard port, no discovery and no shared schema.Choosing between tracking and control protocolsHow to pick a protocol path across a rig, and what actually breaks when data is translated between them.
The gear

Switch selection is a vendor question, and we take no vendor commissions. The platform pages carry the honest read on each ecosystem, including where it is the wrong call.

All systems and platforms
For shows in planning — or in trouble
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