Switch Configuration

Hi,
all my Hi-Fi equipment in my listening room is connected to a Cisco WS-C2960L-8TS-LL via ethernet cables. Audio devices in other rooms are connected via WLAN. Probably everything works fine. I uses the switch with factory parameters. But I do not know if there are any possibilities in the configuration of the switch to improve sound quality. Perhaps anyone has an advice how to configure the Cisco switch to work perfectly. For example: is it better, to configure the QoS?
Thanks in advance!

QoS prioritises traffic in conditions where there may be congestion. Unless your home network is very busy, which it almost certainly isn’t, then it won’t do anything useful.

@Simon-in-Suffolk is a good person to discuss Cisco switches with. He may recommend some IGMP settings you could try.

However, from your description I think you have it right. I used an unmanaged HP switch, which is equivalent to your setup. So I’d say you are spot on.

No, Naim and our media servers don’t use DSCP so unless you have a very busy network with very busy links between switches that support DSCP you won’t see any real benefit of manually assigning QoS…

There are configs you can do help it support it home audio, although not specifically or only marginally for sq.

You can set the Port to the streamer as PortFast , so as to disable loop detection… this speeds up port enablement and when you enable BPDU filtering stops spanning tree management packets on that port to the streamer, reducing a small amount of processing noise on the streamer.

You can also set up an IGMP querier, which forces refresh of multicast group memberships if your router doesn’t do this … and this will help the Naim app discover more quickly.

Best search the Cisco instructions on the web where they will give the instructions.

The BPDU filtering is probably worthwhile doing, and those that have a chain of switches, with Cisco and ‘audiophile’ unless they disable BPDU will have these packets sent to the streamer through the audiophile switch, possibly why they think the ‘SQ’ improves with the Cisco and it’s network management traffic removed from the chain…

Thanks for your advice. Is it worthwhile to enable the BPDU filter on more ports than the one to the streamer? I run also a Roon core, a UnitiServe and a Amazon Fire TV stick.

If you set global BPDU filtering on, then BPDU data will be filtered on any port you configure as Portfast … So yes any host on the end put to PortFast, but best label the ports logically and with sticky tape or similar, so you don’t forget if you reuse the switch for something else.

You can also do the following to see how the switch is filtering multicast addressed group data

Still doesn’t explain why my 6 year old printer wakes up. Prints. Goes back to sleep. Every. Single. Time. With. Out. Fail.

Now there’s the Muso behaviour :upside_down_face:

Ahh but what is the SQ of your printer like :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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