How To | Understand the details regarding Green Ethernet and Q-SYS
Learn the intricacies of Green Ethernet and Q-SYS and how to use them in your network.
Procedure
Details
Note
Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) and AV data traffic do not mix.
Many network switches today, especially enterprise-level switches, offer Energy Efficient—or "Green"—Ethernet, a set of features that reduce electrical consumption. This is useful in large enterprise networking installations because it can substantially cut electrical costs and reduce heat loading on HVAC systems.
Two ways that a switch saves electrical power are by shutting down ports that seem to be inactive and by minimizing drive power on ports that are in use. This is not a problem with typical office network traffic such as email, print jobs, and such, but it may wreak havoc on AV traffic, which relies on precise timely, deterministic delivery of data packets. The usual result are glitches, clicks, or dropouts in the audio.
Caution
This is not a plug-and-play solution. On switches that have this feature, Energy Efficient Ethernet is typically a factory default feature setting; therefore, operator intervention is necessary.
It is important to first go into a switch's configuration settings and switch off EEE, at least on all the individual ports that will carry Q-LAN traffic as well as those that carry other forms of AV traffic such as Dante or AES67.
Some switches use a Web interface for configuration, while others use a terminal command line interface through console connection. Consult the user documentation for the network switches you use.
Once you complete the configurations, be sure to save them to the switch's memory (it is usually not automatic) so that the switch will retain them if it is rebooted.