There is little doubt that AV over IP is here to stay. If you haven’t deployed AV over IP in a project yet, you will.
In order to succeed and make those installs go smoothly, you’ll need to learn more about IT networking. If you have deployed AV over IP, then you know that configuring the network switch can be complicated and tedious with room for lots of errors. Most AV integrators do not have the IT knowledge, nor does the IT staff have the AV knowledge.
“I know a lot of AV people like myself come from an IT background and don’t know it at all,” comments John Henkel, product marketing manager at NETGEAR. “The first thing to do is to reach out to us. We offer a free consultation services design team. These are guys who know AV and they know IT; they know our switches. They can help you figure out the right product in general but also help you design your network. We also recommend you don’t sync the AV on the it network you separate those networks. That’s the No. 1 thing. We can take a look at your design and make sure that you’ve had the proper equipment. Do you have the proper uplinks, but also just make sure that the topology is correct. And then we’re going to help you succeed in this installation.”
To ensure you and the IT team are on the same page, take advantage of the free training offered by many companies to enhance your knowledge. And use a switch with all the IT configuration needed but that is also engineered for AV over IP.
The NETGEAR M4250 series switches have an AV GUI to simply assign a pre-configured and tested profile for the type of AV over IP system you are installing. They have ensured that all the settings are correct while still allowing other changes to be made as needed. Plus, NETGEAR offers free network design assistance for any Pro AV project. You don’t have to do this alone.
“If you want to reach out to that pro AV team, it’s a simple email address: proAVdesign@netgear.com, but we also have an academy that we’ve just refreshed, and we have more content coming. So if you go to netgear.academy, you can login for free, create a free account and we have a couple of AV-over-IP courses in there. We also have the SDVOE design certification course. Even if you’re not doing SDVOE but work using those pieces of equipment, you can still get a lot of valuable information there on specific tips and tricks for your installation,” says Henkel.
