Hi Meck
The network ports are ‘normal’ Gigabit Ethernet ports, you can connect these as part of a normal network as you might have done with iLive.
You can tunnel data through the GigaACE connection in a similar way to what you could do with the original ACE link. You are right that with ACE, there was around 10 Megabits/second available; with GigaACE, this has increased to around 230 Megabits/second. Note that as with iLive, some of this bandwidth is used by the communication between the surface and rack. I estimate 10 Megabits/second will be used by the system under normal use. As with ACE, there is no chance of disrupting the audio flow, but if you max out the data link, you might start to see ‘laggy’ response from the surface, and eventually the surface could disconnect (again, audio would continue even in this scenario). In my experience, the only way to really max out the link enough to cause problems is to run an aggressive throughput test.
You should be able to send VLAN tagged packets through the GigaACE data tunnel, as the tunnel is transparent at layer 2. The Ethernet Switch in the units, that connects the two network ports to the GigaACE data tunnel, supports VLAN functionality, but does not have any special configuration, and should behave pretty much like a ‘dumb’ switch. I have not personally tried to do this however.
I would recommend verifying that the VLAN capabilities work as you expect them to, before trying to deploy a system somewhere important.
Hope this helps
– Jeff, A&H
