All the tests I have done were with unicast. This is the default way of working in NDI. And there’s a reason for it: it’s much simpler to configure than multicast. No hassle with IGMP (snooping) and getting multicast from one subnet (VLAN) to another.

I was surprised how ease it is to setup things, network wise. If you have a DHCP server, it pretty much works out of the box.

But sometimes you need multicast. If you have a lot of “viewers” for a particular stream, it saves a lot of bandwidth. And NDI sources (like e.g. camera’s) can only serve a limited number of unicast “viewers”. So multicast is a life saver.

Fortunately NDI supports multicast as well. But is requires more configuration, both in the NDI equipment and the network.

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Next page:
8. Verdict

Content:
1. Introduction
2. NDI Facts
3. Connecting and Testing
4. Video Quality
5. Switching
6. Latency
7. Multicast
8. Verdict