HDMI over IP with multi switches?? Can vlans protect the main network?

[Ericarthurc]

So I have an interesting issue right now and I am in need of help. So we have a pretty big and long building and our main switch is upstairs on the furthest east of the building. Our offices were built at a later time on the bottom floor on the complete opposite side of the building and the previous IT admin at the time installed a Cisco 300G 24 port switch in the office and just ran a long Ethernet cable from the main switch to that switch. Then the office Ethernet runs were routed to the little switch in the office; so their daisy chain switches.

 

The issue is we just installed a DVR for our security system and I want to send the camera signal to monitors throughout the building. The DVR has windows/mac software but that requires buying computers and whatnot; but the DVR has a clean hdmi signal out and I want to send that hdmi signal. The DVR is installed upstairs in the main rack under the main switch.

 

So for setup; the main switch is a Catalyst 3750G and I have 4 VLANS running on it; and a Sonicwall NSA 2600 firewall doing DHCP over the VLANS.

Port 50 on the switch is configured as a TRUNK port and has the Ethernet cable running to the switch in the office. (This will be SFP LX single mode fiber in the future)

 

So my question is can I use an HDMI over IP sender to send the HDMI signal, say into port 10 on the 3750g, down the main switch through port 50 down to the small switch. Then on the small switch run an Ethernet cable to a HDMI over IP receiver and pick up that signal without screwing up all the over traffic on the network. Is this even possible and does it have to be over another VLAN? If it's possible I would probably do it on its own VLAN anyway.

 

My concern is I have seen hdmi over IP senders that go to network switches; but those switches are usually dedicated to just video and don't have the main network or vlan1 running through them. I don't want to set this up and then now all the Ethernet ports in the building can't communicate with VLAN 1.

[Lurick]

So long as they are actual HDMI over IP devices, which do exist just saying this since there are those that just use ethernet for the cable and can't do IP, you'll be okay from what I know. It should just tag the packets with the proper VLAN, switch it on through without issue, and pop out on the other side. I think I saw you might need IGMP snooping, depending on how the packets are sent (unicast or multicast) but beyond that I can't think of anything that would stop it  

[Ericarthurc]

27 minutes ago, Lurick said:

So long as they are actual HDMI over IP devices, which do exist just saying this since there are those that just use ethernet for the cable and can't do IP, you'll be okay from what I know. It should just tag the packets with the proper VLAN, switch it on through without issue, and pop out on the other side. I think I saw you might need IGMP snooping, depending on how the packets are sent (unicast or multicast) but beyond that I can't think of anything that would stop it  

Thank you! Yeah definitely, I know there are just straight HDMI over cable (cat5/6) and those don't have IPs. I would definitely need then to have an IP so they can use the vlan

[brwainer]

27 minutes ago, Lurick said:

So long as they are actual HDMI over IP devices, which do exist just saying this since there are those that just use ethernet for the cable and can't do IP, you'll be okay from what I know. It should just tag the packets with the proper VLAN, switch it on through without issue, and pop out on the other side. I think I saw you might need IGMP snooping, depending on how the packets are sent (unicast or multicast) but beyond that I can't think of anything that would stop it  

If you limit the ports that have the VLAN (e.g. on any trunk ports that shouldn’t be carrying the video data, you limit then to just the other VLANs via “switchport trunk allow vlan <numbers>”) then the traffic can’t go anywhere that it shouldn’t. That helps you if the system uses multicast or broadcast. Alternatively you can enable IGMP, which will automatically limit multicast traffic to just the ports with receivers. Note that IGMP snooping (also know as passive mode) is normally enabled by default on Cisco switches such as the 3750X, but I don’t know about the 300G. IGMP also requires a Querier (also known as Active mode) in each VLAN - you can do this on the core switch (the 3750X).

 

None of the above matters if the HDMI-over-IP system you choose uses Unicast traffic.

[Ericarthurc]

57 minutes ago, brwainer said:

If you limit the ports that have the VLAN (e.g. on any trunk ports that shouldn’t be carrying the video data, you limit then to just the other VLANs via “switchport trunk allow vlan <numbers>”) then the traffic can’t go anywhere that it shouldn’t. That helps you if the system uses multicast or broadcast. Alternatively you can enable IGMP, which will automatically limit multicast traffic to just the ports with receivers. Note that IGMP snooping (also know as passive mode) is normally enabled by default on Cisco switches such as the 3750X, but I don’t know about the 300G. IGMP also requires a Querier (also known as Active mode) in each VLAN - you can do this on the core switch (the 3750X).

 

None of the above matters if the HDMI-over-IP system you choose uses Unicast traffic.

Thank you so much!

[Ericarthurc]

On 7/10/2019 at 2:48 PM, Lurick said:

So long as they are actual HDMI over IP devices, which do exist just saying this since there are those that just use ethernet for the cable and can't do IP, you'll be okay from what I know. It should just tag the packets with the proper VLAN, switch it on through without issue, and pop out on the other side. I think I saw you might need IGMP snooping, depending on how the packets are sent (unicast or multicast) but beyond that I can't think of anything that would stop it  

Just wanted to post an update; I got the HDMI over IP devices and configured them on a private vlan. Then configured the trunk port going to the other switch to include that vlan. Then on the other switch on the port going to the receiver device I configured it to just use that vlan. It works great!

 

Thank you both!