The What: Netgear has added a new series of switches designed and built from the ground up for the growing AV over IP market. Dubbed the AV Line, Netgear says the new M4250 line of switches combine "years of networking expertise with best practices from leading experts in the professional AV market."
The What Else: The new M4250 AV interface presents common AV controls right up front with user-selectable profiles for common AV platforms, making it a snap to ensure the settings are correct for a specific audio or video application.
The M4250 line of switches also supports more advanced configuration and a robust set of features for many different types of installations. Netgear's web-based IT GUI—along with console, telnet, and SSH connections and a standard, out-of-band Ethernet port—is available for deeper settings adjustments. Additional features include static, RIP and PIM routing, DHCP server, and PTPv2.
The M4250 product line offers full support for Audio Video Bridging (AVB), and all of the AV Line M4250 switches can be optionally licensed for AVB support.
The switches launching as part of the AV Line series range from 8 to 16 ports with a variety of PoE+ (30W per port) and Ultra90 PoE++ (90W per port) options. In addition, uplink choices include 1G for audio installations or standalone video installations as well as 10G uplinks for larger scale video deployments. The AV Line M4250 series also includes 12-port multi-gigabit Ethernet and 16-port 1G/10G fiber models for plug-and-play aggregation in a totally automated star topology.
The Bottom Line: The M4250 switches are designed for a clean integration with traditional rack-mounted AV equipment.
Netgear's ProSafe Limited Lifetime Hardware Warranty includes 90 days of technical support via phone and email, lifetime technical support through online chat, and lifetime next business day hardware replacement.
For more information on Netgear's new AV Line (M4250), visit netgear.com/landings/avline.
