Meeting Topic: Audio Networking Using Fibre Transmission
Speaker Name: Luca Giaroli, Optocore
Other business or activities at the meeting: The meeting started with an announcement concerning the call for new executive members, the nominations for Executive for the 2007/8 season were announced.
Meeting Location: Ryerson University, Toronto
Luca Giaroli from Optocore discussed their new fibre optic distribution network. Luca discussed its redundant ring topology and low latency, both of which lead it to be an ideal product for live productions, where redundancy and low latency are key requirements. He also stressed that standard Ethernet protocols do not lend themselves to the live environment very well due to their (relatively) high latency.
Various demonstrations were shown giving the audience an indication that the redundant nature of the product did work very well. The system recovers from any single failure within one sample. Where there is more than one failure, the system reconfigures itself into two (virtual) rings.
The system has a current limit of 1 Gb/s, a firmware update scheduled for later this year will allow any number of audio, video and control channels over the network up to the value. During the question and answer period, questions centered around uses of the network. Luca made it clear that the fibre network is just a transport mechanism and thus is only being used as a carrier for the information.
The network is proprietary in nature. One comment centered around the tools that were available for testing. Luca indicated that there is little to test, all devices on the network are controlled. Should any testing be required, Optocore would be able to provide that appropriate software tools to debug the network. However, Luca made the point that this is not like an Ethernet network, so troubleshooting is unlikely to be as much of a problem.
