Update on good Ethernet switch

Here's a new, lower priced option, from LHY:

https://www.beatechnik.com/fmc

Uptone is working on a new Etherregen; meanwhile the first one is available again, isloation mode and 10m clock compatible. 

For my home network, I use a managed tp link switch which is more expensive than unmanaged, as well as a mikrotik 24 port manged switch router.

A couple of things about ethernet. The ethernet standard is that cat 5e cable will support gigabit up to 100 meters. A switch will tend to clean up incoming frames by re-generating them.

There are two main TCP/IP protocols: TCP and UDP. TCP sits on top of the lower levels of the stack and will monitor sequence numbers of incoming packets/frames and will request re-transmission if a missing packet is detected. In this manner it is a lossless protocol. The UDP protocol is a broadcast protocol as it simply passes frames along with best efforts, and has no mechanism for detecting and correcting errors.

As mentioned above, at the switching layer 2--frames that fail the crc check are discarded with no notification to the layers above it. UDP has lower overhead than TCP and is often used for media output that is generally thought to be tolerant of missing data... O:

One can’t know the protocol used unless the vendor of the source data machine puts it in the specs, or you can run a sniffer like wireshark and see what is going on.

All this is leading to the idea that if music is sent over the network using a broadcast protocol like udp, there could be some variability in data quality depending on the hardware and quality of network connections and so forth.

These concepts apply to wireless as well except that layer 2 for that is using radio waves instead of a wire. I don’t have enough knowledge about wireless to opine on the reliability and frequency of lost packets--but if UDP is the higher level protocol, still not going to ensure complete transmission of data.

* I don’t want to get into the deets of the tcp/stack, so I am using frames, packets,and segments interchangeably to get the concepts across, though if one digs into the network stack, these names have specific meanings and must be kept accurate.

Ok, where is the best place to buy the LHY SW6? AliExpress is $565….much less, but may have hidden import fees? Maybe not, as it is under the $800 threshold for the fees to apply.  
 

$800 is more than I want to pay from the US distributor. No discounts available from the US dealer.

The LHT sw8 Ethernet switch runs Cool !

i highly recommend at some point for sure a Decent power cord like the Pangea Sig MK-2 awg14 for around $200 a great value using Cardas best 6-9s Copper

and a Synergistic research Purple fuse these2 complement this for even better resolution and smoothness.