kcarpenter
09-30-2008, 02:13 PM
This question came from a customer, I thought it would be a good post in this forum. Basically the question was "If I have multicast configured across the WAN for 1 direction essentially for 'listen only' can I use Supernode to go back over unicast in special cases where talkback was required?"
The answer is no, at least during the time of this posting. In the future 1 way Supernodes may be a feature of WAVE. Here is why you will not want to set this up in this fashion.
You will most definitely want to disable multicast to the Supernoding locations. Supernodes today can't operate in a mixed mode environment where you only want to Supernode audio UP to HQ but never DOWN from HQ.
What would happen is in the locations where the Supernode client exists (for talk back capability) you'd have dual audio streams on that local network in multicast. In other words, the multicast out from the HQ to the branch offices would exist --- and then the Supernode client would take the inbound audio and reflect it to local multicast as well. So you've now got two multicast streams on the network that the clients are receiving; and likely out of sync.
The answer is no, at least during the time of this posting. In the future 1 way Supernodes may be a feature of WAVE. Here is why you will not want to set this up in this fashion.
You will most definitely want to disable multicast to the Supernoding locations. Supernodes today can't operate in a mixed mode environment where you only want to Supernode audio UP to HQ but never DOWN from HQ.
What would happen is in the locations where the Supernode client exists (for talk back capability) you'd have dual audio streams on that local network in multicast. In other words, the multicast out from the HQ to the branch offices would exist --- and then the Supernode client would take the inbound audio and reflect it to local multicast as well. So you've now got two multicast streams on the network that the clients are receiving; and likely out of sync.