Dante Switch Requirements: QoS, EEE and IGMP
Dante Switch Requirements: QoS, EEE and IGMP
Getting the network right is the single biggest factor in a stable Dante install. The good news: Dante runs on standard off-the-shelf Ethernet — no proprietary hardware required. The bad news: choose the wrong switch or leave the wrong feature enabled and you will spend hours chasing phantom dropouts.
Gigabit vs 100 Mbps
Use Gigabit switches. At channel counts of 32 or above, Gigabit is mandatory. For smaller systems you can survive on 100 Mbps if you configure QoS correctly, but there is no headroom and any burst of background traffic will cause issues. In practice, Gigabit switches are now cheap enough that there is no reason to use 100 Mbps in a new install.
Gigabit switches are also recommended for inter-switch links (uplinks) regardless of edge port speed.
Cabling
Cat5e or Cat6 is recommended throughout. Cat5 is acceptable on purely 100 Mbps segments. Dante is medium-agnostic — fibre works fine via a switch with SFP ports; the standard Ethernet rules apply regardless of the physical medium.
Direct device-to-device connections (no switch) work fine for two-device systems or a single device connected to a control laptop. Beyond that, use a switch-based star topology. Daisy-chaining devices is not supported — if one device in a chain fails, you lose everything downstream.
Dante does not support Wi-Fi for audio. Do not connect Dante devices over wireless links. If a Wi-Fi access point is on the same network segment, IGMP snooping becomes mandatory (see below) to prevent multicast flooding the wireless side.
Quality of Service (QoS)
Dante uses VoIP-style DSCP/Diffserv QoS to prioritise clock sync and audio packets ahead of general traffic. The switch must support:
- DSCP (Diffserv) QoS with strict priority
- 4 queues minimum
- Gigabit ports on inter-switch links
Dante assigns the following DSCP values:
| Priority | Usage | DSCP Label | Decimal |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | PTP clock events | CS7 | 56 |
| Medium | Audio + PTP general | EF | 46 |
| Low | Reserved | CS1 | 8 |
| None | Background traffic | Best Effort | 0 |
QoS is required when 100 Mbps devices are present. On full-Gigabit networks it is technically optional but strongly recommended — enabling it costs nothing and provides resilience when the network carries other traffic.
Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE / Green Ethernet / 802.3az)
Disable EEE on every port carrying Dante traffic. This is not optional.
EEE reduces switch power consumption during low-traffic periods by allowing ports to enter a low-power state. The negotiation for entry and exit from this state can introduce timing jitter that causes clock synchronisation problems and audio dropouts. The failure mode is intermittent and difficult to diagnose — you may see occasional clicks, brief silences, or unstable clock status in Dante Controller.
On a managed switch: disable EEE per-port in the switch configuration interface. On an unmanaged switch: do not purchase a model that lists EEE support, because you cannot disable it.
IGMP Snooping
On small, isolated networks with a single switch and only Dante devices, IGMP snooping is unnecessary — simply disable multicast filtering or use an unmanaged Gigabit switch (EEE-free).
IGMP snooping becomes required when:
- Multicast Dante or AES67 audio flows are in use
- Dante traffic is mixed with other multicast (for example, multicast video systems)
- Critical control systems (Crestron, AMX, Extron) share the network
- 100 Mbps devices are present
- A Wi-Fi access point is on the same network segment
IGMP snooping prevents multicast flooding — it ensures multicast audio only reaches ports whose devices have requested it, rather than saturating every port on the switch.
When configuring IGMP snooping:
- Set the IGMP query interval to 30 seconds
- Do not enable "Filter Unregistered Multicast" — this blocks mDNS, PTP, and Dante discovery traffic and will cause devices to disappear from Dante Controller
- Only one IGMP querier per network
- IGMP proxies and PIM routing are not supported
If devices are still not appearing after configuring IGMP snooping, check whether static IGMP routes are needed for PTP traffic (224.0.1.129–132) and Dante control traffic (224.0.0.230–233).
Managed vs Unmanaged
A managed switch is recommended for any production install. It gives you:
- Per-port traffic statistics and error counters
- Ability to disable EEE
- QoS configuration
- IGMP snooping control
- VLAN support (required for DDM-managed multi-domain networks)
If you use an unmanaged switch, ensure it does not support EEE, and accept that you have no visibility into port errors or bandwidth utilisation.
Quick Checklist for Switch Selection
Before ordering a switch for a Dante install, confirm:
- Gigabit ports (all edges and uplinks)
- DSCP/Diffserv QoS with strict priority, 4 queues
- EEE disable per-port
- IGMP snooping configurable (for anything beyond a single-switch isolated system)
- No proprietary firmware that disables standard QoS marking
This article was adapted from Audinate's original guidance: "Networks and Switches" — https://support.getdante.com/hc/en-gb/articles/5391517524127-Networks-and-Switches Habitech-edited for UK trade installer context. Original © Audinate Pty Ltd.