Quote Originally Posted by Mr_P
Im a little confused how GrandMA was able to communicate - especially as the IP addresses were in different ranges - MA = 192.. and Cat and the rest of the network = 2.. but it did. Any suggestions to explain this would be apriciated!....
S
artnet can be set to use either a specific ip address, or a broadcast address,

broadcast addresses can also have sub nodes - such as 2.255.255.255 which only goes to devices using 2.x.x.x addresses.


if the grandma broadcasts its data using a target of 255.255.255.255 then any device on the network can read the data -

if the grandma broadcasts it data using a target of 2.255.255.255 then only devices using 2.x.x.x address can read the data.

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Catalyst normally outputs artnet data using a broadcast address of 255.255.255.255.

it can be set to poll the devices to get static addresses of the artnet nodes, in which case it broadcasts directly to the device address.
using static addresses helps routers in large networks.
as the artnet data will be filtered by the network switches and only sent to specific devices.

for example using routable static artnet - if i have two artnet boxes connected to an ethernet switch- i send data to box boxes using their exact address. the ethernet switch will work some magic, and send only the network data for each specific device to the box.

this capability means that you can dramatically increase the capacity of a network to get more output universes without getting network bottlenecks from the 10BT capacity of artnet boxes.
This was the scheme used on the Wynn hotel.
The network backbone was fibre based- to get low latency output.
each artnet box connected through a switch.