Dante on Passive Optical Networks (GPON)

Dante, and the standards on which it is based are designed to operate on switched Ethernet networks. In order for a Passive Optical Network to support Dante, we require the PON to be configured to have the characteristics of and behave like switched Ethernet. This includes:

Symmetric delay between two points in the network.
Stable forwarding delay for all PTP traffic in both leader-to-follower and follower-to-leader directions.
Suppression of multicast traffic repeated out of the ingress port (i.e. multicast packets are not transmitted back out of the port on which they entered).
Prioritization is maintained for PTP traffic over audio and any video traffic that may be on the network. DSCP tags must be respected on all Dante traffic.
Unicast delay requests can be enabled on Dante devices to reduce the overall volume of multicast PTP traffic.
Logical placement of the PTP clock master within the network is dependent on network architecture and the multicast forwarding tree implemented by the PON.
There are no published thresholds on parameters such as delay or delay variation. The PON manufacturer is encouraged to undertake testing to establish that their link transport is capable of the above, for which loan equipment can be arranged. Mechanisms to achieve the above will vary across PON vendors.

Dante implemented on a PON will work as long as the standard IT procedures and policies are followed and attention is paid to clock and latency settings, just as they would be on any non-PON network.

As this is network configuration, our support team can only suggest help, we do not directly support Passive Optical or Software Defined networks.