What features are important when purchasing a switch?

Dante makes use of standard Voice over IP (VoIP) Quality of Service (QoS) switch features, to prioritize clock sync and audio traffic over other network traffic. VoIP QoS features are available in a variety of inexpensive and enterprise Ethernet switches. Any switches with the following features should be appropriate for use with Dante:

• Gigabit ports for inter-switch connections
• Quality of Service (QoS) with 4 queues
• Diffserv (DSCP) QoS, with strict priority
• A managed switch is also recommended, to provide detailed information about the operation of each network link: port speed, error counters, bandwidth used, etc.
• The ability to deactivate Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE). Unmanaged switches that feature EEE should not be used with Dante.