AV-over-IP + network design
the boardroom backbone.

/ Engineering body

What this integration is and where it lives

AV-over-IP replaced matrix-switcher cabling roughly five years ago in any boardroom, classroom or video-wall above ~16 endpoints. The shift is mostly economic — fewer dedicated AV runs — but the engineering shift is significant. AV-over-IP traffic is real-time, latency-sensitive, and heavily multicast. A standard enterprise LAN designed for documents and SaaS is not the same network as one ready for 4K60 SDVoE or Dante. Either you build a dedicated AV-VLAN with QoS marked end-to-end, or you size the existing LAN with the AV burden documented and the IT team aligned on multicast pruning. The integration point is the network architect, not the AV integrator. AV-over-IP standards (SDVoE, NDI, Dante AV) all have different requirements for switch hardware, IGMP snooping behaviour and PTP synchronisation. SDVoE in particular needs IGMP v3 and a switch that doesn't choke on the multicast group churn that a 32-endpoint matrix generates. Dante is more forgiving on switch hardware but needs strict QoS for clock recovery. The right pattern is to put AV on its own VLAN, give it priority queueing, and document the network requirements in the AV submittal so IT and AV agree before commissioning.