With AV-over-IP, the network now carries the show. Dante and AES67 ride the same switches as the control plane and the cameras, and when one VLAN, one querier, or one clock slips, the room drops and the call comes to you. CrossConnect maps everything you installed, watches the four things every multicast stream depends on, and when something breaks it names the exact switch and hands you the command. In your language: lanes, streams, clocks, and PoE.
You used to chase XLR and HDMI. Now the audio is a multicast flow, the video is a stream, and the control is a VLAN, all riding switches that some IT team three buildings away can change without telling you. The day you hand the room over the client wants a diagram, and six months later a querier election flips and a studio goes quiet. CrossConnect keeps a live model of the network under your rooms, so the diagram is true today and the answer is already there when the room acts up.
Someone three buildings away tweaks one line, and the audio you installed drops. The old way is an hour of guessing while a client stands over your shoulder. So instead you ask the black box. It quietly records every change to the network, walks back to the exact one that broke the path your audio needs, and lays the before and after side by side. You are back in minutes, and you can show whose change did it.
ip access-list extended AV-EGRESS
permit ip any any
!
interface Gi0/1
ip access-group AV-EGRESS out
ip access-list extended AV-EGRESS
deny udp any 10.10.20.0 0.0.0.255 eq 4440
permit ip any any
!
interface Gi0/1
ip access-group AV-EGRESS out
Change forensics walks the config history on any vendor; the formal "this line flipped reachability" verdict covers the vendors with full config models, and the rest falls back to config-level analysis. Coverage per vendor is in the Vendor Support Reference.
That is the whole point: when the network under your rooms misbehaves, you already know what it is. Here is what CrossConnect maps and watches to get you there.
Point it at the rooms and CrossConnect recognizes the AV gear on sight, by manufacturer, with nothing to type in: Crestron, Q-SYS, Extron, Biamp, Shure, and the switches under them. It maps the management, audio, video, and control lanes end to end and checks that they stay separate two ways at once: as configured, and as observed crossing each VLAN. If audio shows up where it should not, you catch it before the client does.
Every AV-over-IP stream rides on four things being right at once. CrossConnect watches all four on every AV VLAN, and when one is off it names the real switches and hands you the command for each platform.
Every AV VLAN needs snooping on and exactly one active querier, or multicast floods or starves. CrossConnect checks both per VLAN, tells you which switches are missing it, and flags a stray snooping-querier fighting the multicast router.
one active querier, per VLANDante and AES67 ride a PTP clock, and they can run different PTP profiles. With two grandmasters in a domain, or a clock that keeps flapping, the audio drifts and pops. CrossConnect verifies each PTP domain locks to a single grandmaster.
PTP grandmasterIf the audio is not DSCP-marked EF and held in its own queue, the first burst of traffic steps on it. CrossConnect checks that the marking survives each trust boundary and the queues guard the stream end to end.
DSCP EF · queues"18 switches need IGMP snooping, starting with Dallas Access 01." It names them and gives the command for each platform, so the fix is a paste you make in seconds.
named · the right commandflowchart LR ROOM["Your AV rooms
cameras · audio · displays"] --> NET["The network underneath"] NET --> CC["CrossConnect watches
what keeps the room up"] CC --> L["The lanes stay separate"] CC --> K["The audio clock stays locked"] CC --> P["The streams get priority"] CC --> S["Names the exact switch
the moment something slips"] classDef app fill:#173a6b,stroke:#0f2a4f,color:#ffffff; classDef chk fill:#e3f3f6,stroke:#1797b3,color:#0d4f5a; classDef ext fill:#ffffff,stroke:#9aa8c0,color:#173a6b; class CC app; class L,K,P,S chk; class ROOM,NET ext;
CrossConnect points at the switch and hands you the command; you make the change. Multicast coverage by vendor is in the Vendor Support Reference.
A rack of PTZ cameras, a few APs, and a touch panel can quietly push a switch past its power budget, and the first you hear of it is a camera dropping mid-event. CrossConnect tracks the PoE draw against each switch's budget and warns you while you still have headroom to move a load, not after a port shuts down.
Type "which Studio A switch is low on power headroom?" or "is the guest network really walled off from the audio?" and get an answer tied to the record. When the install is done, hand over a live diagram instead of a Visio file that went stale the week you saved it, and show the lanes stay separate, the streams are healthy, and the power has headroom.
How each AV vendor is recognized and modeled, what the platform does end to end, and the multicast plumbing it watches. View in the browser or download the PDF.
Point CrossConnect at a network like the ones you build, read-only, and watch it map your gear and lanes. It catches the multicast trouble that quietly drops rooms before the client does, and tells you what is one querier or one clock from a bad day. The next time a room drops, you walk in already knowing what changed and whose change it was. It is in operator preview: young, but everything here is built and running against a real network today.