Got a cobranet system here and it like a network darlec destroy everything it can find (thinking the guy might have set it up wrong).

They user cobranet at chalk, my company does the I.T there, the cobranet is totally seperate network. is it on the same network as your pc/servers etc, I dont think it should be.

Well it is ... and the only reason they went with it is because "it could"

Any reason it is on the same physical network, surely it would not hard to seperate it out in the patch panel, put it on its on switch.

Whats it doing wrong?

Our network encompasses 25 seperate buildings. With some moderately long runs (ie. its not 10 pcs and a few devices all going back to a single rack cabinet at a pub)
With some links being a single pair of fibres. So it would be very hard to seperate it out on the patch panel (ie. it would involved digging trenches).

We have around 500 nodes. And some of the switches we are using (including in the core) are now 13/14 years old ?

It sends around 7000 layer 2 broadcast packets a second ... even when it is doing nothing.
I am not convinced there isn't a configuration issue but its all being done by a contractor so I have no way to even begin to research it (no idea what he has setup)

Obes if its not your network and you have not access to it then how can you possibly know its not doing anything? Just because its not playing audible sound doesnt mean its not doing anything.

ie. its not 10 pcs and a few devices all going back to a single rack cabinet at a pub)

FYI, chalk has dedicated server room with 11 servers, 7 full racks of gear including the cobranet, about 30 pos machines, 15 wyse terminals and 20 pc's and 4 fibre links between buildings, Thats not including the poker network.

Whenever I look at the cobranet switches, they are always going crazy at chalk, but i never realy take much notice cause its a seperate network, sounds like something isnt setup right.

Obes if its not your network and you have not access to it then how can you possibly know its not doing anything? Just because its not playing audible sound doesnt mean its not doing anything.

1. It is my network. And as such the device is now unplugged. Problem is apparently they paid a lot of money for the cobranet stuff.
2. I know when its doing something cos either a bell or a sound comes out of the speakers. The rest of the time to all intense purposes its not doing anything (other then sending 7000 packets a second ... of nothing).

This system is used to send bells 14 times a day for around 10seconds a time. And 2 or 3 sub 5min PA announcements a day (think mono low bitrate streams). That quite obviously needs 7000 broadcast packets a second, all day ... everyday ...

Its not being used to broadcast a concert on 40 banks of speakers where delay is vital. (imo the AV guy got sold a dud by a contractor who didn't understand the problem or the even their intended solution). The reason I was asking is because I am trying to find anyone with experience of someone trying to run cobranet on a network with data services. Tried vlaning and QOS, it helped but not enough to make it a viable solution.

ps. 7 "full" racks ? alot of that space will be video surveillance, amps and crap surely.

bout 2.5 racks for IT stuff, .5 rack for security servers, 3 racks for AV stuff, including cobranet stuff amps, nightlife systems etc and another rack for the lions clubs, which also has some cobranet stuff.

They use videopro from memory, maybe give them a call.

Pretty sure this was an indirect Videopro recommendation.

My limited experience with videopro has been high prices and lots of outsourcing.

Viper, I would say the Cobranet at Chalk is simply a link between DSP's to cascade them - daisy chained. What is the back of the AV rack like there, messy?

Something is seriously wrong there, Obes. Cobranet is just the protocol, the data is still just IP packets. You can get a s*** load of high quality audio channels on a 100Mbit network. By the sounds of it you only have the 1 stream with many destinations so bandwidth isn't an issue for what is happening anyway. Whatever is programming/scheduling the audio source seems to be constantly streaming the audio but to maybe incorrect IP addresses/devices so that's why you aren't getting any sound but just the traffic? The source device is fked anyway and I'd be getting the company who commissioned it out to fix it or correctly program it.

Cobranet is not IP ... its an ethernet link layer protocol.

And yes I think there is something wrong. I was hoping to find someone with clues about cobranet. The funny bit is it will go off destroying the network with 0 "recievers" plugged in.

And the sound works fine when its plugged in. Its the 3000ms pings on a link that normally experiences 1-5ms pings that concerns me, given that the primary purpose of the network is the data network, and the audio use is at best 1% of the usage in terms of time.

why not split it off into its own VLAN?

What is the back of the AV rack like there, messy?

Its not too bad actually.

ara did that, and dropped that vlans priority to the bottom (as I mentioned in there somewhere). But it still smashes the switches. Its ok on some of the switches. But it totally destroys the HP 2524s and 4000Ms

seeming as it uses layer2 packets, wouldnt you need switches that can vlan layer2 packets, I assume you have already thought of this though.

vlans are layer2, I don't get the question

The vlans work.
And yes I am certain because all of a sudden 500 machines aren't getting 7000 packets a second that they don't know how to do anything with. It just congests the links with packets of nothing to the point where the switch run out of packet buffers. So packets get dropped or delayed out the wazoo.

have you tried turning it off and on?