Practical AV network design, VLAN planning for Dante and NDI, IP schedules, PoE budgets, duplicate-IP prevention, and switch documentation for shows and installs.
AV networks are real networks with show-day stakes
Modern AV rides on Ethernet: Dante and AES67 for audio, NDI and ST 2110 for video, PoE for cameras and touch panels, plus the control traffic that holds it together. The engineering is standard IT, VLANs, multicast, DHCP, but the failure mode isn't a slow file share. It's silence in a room of 2,000 people.
The discipline that prevents that is boring and effective: plan the segments, write down every address, budget the power, and document the switch. A show network you can't hand to another tech on one page is a show network that fails with you as the single point of recovery.
Segment by traffic class, not by department politics, media, control, and management have different needs. See VLAN planning for AV systems.
VLAN Planning for AV Systems, A working VLAN plan for AV networks, segment Dante, NDI, control, and guest traffic, contain multicast with IGMP, and know when a flat network is honestly fine.
How to Create an IP Schedule for AV Systems, What an IP schedule is, which address space to pick, block allocation by device class, static vs DHCP guidance, the exact columns to track, free CSV template.
PoE Budget Planning for AV and IT Devices, What a PoE budget is, how to calculate it with honest device-draw ranges, why ports don't equal watts, and the headroom rule working crews plan around.
How to Prevent Duplicate IP Addresses in AV Systems, Duplicate IPs cause the strangest show-network failures. Prevent them with one IP schedule, reserved ranges, and bench config, then find offenders fast.
Switch Port Documentation: The Port Schedule, Switch port documentation with a port schedule: one row per port for VLANs, PoE, connected device, and cable ID. Your network trace map, free CSV template.
Dante Network Requirements: A Practical Planning Guide, Plan a Dante network the right way: managed switches, QoS, one clock leader, and VLAN segmentation. A practical planning guide that defers exact specs to Audinate.
IGMP Snooping for AV Networks, IGMP snooping for AV networks stops multicast from flooding every port. How the querier works, the one-querier rule, and why Dante and NDI need it.
Static IP vs DHCP for AV Systems, Static IP vs DHCP for AV: static for show-critical core gear, DHCP reservations for managed roaming devices, and a plain pool for transient clients.
Control Network vs Media Network Separation, Control network vs media network separation, explained: when to run physically separate AV networks and when VLAN segmentation on shared switches is enough.
Network Loop Prevention on Show Networks, Network loop prevention on AV show networks: how one cable back into the switch causes a broadcast storm, and why labeled uplinks and spanning tree stop it.
Document your AV network in WireFlow
VLANs, IPs, PoE, and switch ports live on the same diagram as your signal flow, one source of truth for the whole system.