showstack / compare / acn-vs-sacn
ACN vs sACN
Are ACN and sACN the same thing? Below is every field we hold on both, side by side. Each one is sourced on the individual entry, and anything nobody could source is left blank rather than guessed.
Side by side
| ACN | sACN | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | network-transport | lighting-control |
| Flow | Control — small, urgent, must arrive | Control — small, urgent, must arrive |
| Ports | UDP 5568 | UDP 5568 |
| Transport | udp, tcp | udp |
| Multicast | yes | 239.255.0.0/16 (IPv4, universe in low two octets), FF18::83:00:00:00/104 (IPv6) |
| Addressing | — | 512 slots per universe; universes 1-63999, plus 64214 for E1.31 discovery. |
| Spec availability | open-published | open-published |
| Steward | ESTA (Entertainment Services and Technology Association) | ESTA (Entertainment Services and Technology Association) |
| First published | 2006 | 2009 |
| Status | current | current |
| Our confidence | reported | verified |
Both are control flows. Latency and loss on the messages that fire once. A repeating level survives a dropped packet; a GO does not. That applies equally to either, so it is not a discriminator here.
Speaks both (1)
These are the safe choices if you have not committed to either, or need to bridge the two.
- Wireshark Wireshark Foundation
sACN only (75)
- ArKaos MediaMaster ArKaos
- Avolites Titan Avolites
- Capture Capture Visualisation AB
- ChamSys MagicQ ChamSys
- Chataigne Ben Kuper
- Daslight Daslight (Nicolaudie)
- Depence Syncronorm GmbH
- disguise Designer disguise
- DMX-Workshop Singularity (UK) Ltd
- DMXControl 3 DMXControl Projects e.V.
- dot2 onPC MA Lighting
- Eos Electronic Theatre Controls (ETC)
- grandMA3 onPC MA Lighting
- Hippotizer Green Hippo (an ACT Entertainment brand)
- L8 L8 LLC
- LightConverse LightConverse
- Lightkey Lightkey
- MadMapper garageCube
- Medialon Control System Medialon (Barco)
- Millumin Anomes (Philippe Chaurand)
- OLA (Open Lighting Architecture) Open Lighting Project
- ONYX Obsidian Control Systems
- PIXERA AV Stumpfl
- QLab Figure 53
- QLC+ QLC+ project
- Realizzer 3D Realizzer
- sACNView
- Smode Smode Tech
- Stage Precision Stage Precision
- TouchDesigner Derivative
- Unreal Engine Epic Games
- Vectorworks Vision Vectorworks, Inc.
- WYSIWYG CAST Group Inc.
- Analog Way Picturall Mark II Analog Way
- Avolites Ai Q3 Avolites
- Avolites Arena Avolites
- Avolites Diamond 9 Avolites
- Avolites Tiger Touch III Avolites
- ChamSys MagicQ MQ80 ChamSys
- ChamSys MagicQ MQ500M Stadium ChamSys
- Christie Pandoras Box Christie
- Cisco Catalyst 9200 Series Cisco
- Cisco Catalyst 9300 Cisco
- City Theatrical Multiverse Transmitter City Theatrical
- disguise gx 3 disguise
- ELC dmXLAN node8 ELC Lighting
- ENTTEC DIN Ethergate MK2 ENTTEC
- ENTTEC ODE Mk3 ENTTEC
- Eos Apex 5 ETC
- ETC Eos Apex 10 ETC
- ETC Ion Xe 20 ETC
- ETC Response Mk2 DMX/RDM Gateway ETC
- ETC Sensor3 Dimmer Rack ETC
- ETC ThruPower Rack ETC
- Follow-Me 3D Follow-Me
- grandMA2 full-size MA Lighting
- grandMA3 full-size MA Lighting
- MA Lighting grandMA3 light MA Lighting
- Green Hippo Hippotizer Karst+ MK2 Green Hippo
- Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 Green Hippo
- Hog 4 High End Systems
- LumenRadio CRMX Nova TX2 LumenRadio
- Luminex GigaCore 10 Luminex Network Intelligence
- Luminex GigaCore 16Xt Luminex Network Intelligence
- Luminex GigaCore 26i Luminex Network Intelligence
- Luminex LumiNode 12 Luminex Network Intelligence
- Megapixel HELIOS LED Processing Platform Megapixel VR
- Modulo Kinetic Modulo Pi
- NETGEAR M4250 (AV Line) NETGEAR
- Obsidian Control Systems NX4 Obsidian Control Systems
- Pathway Connectivity Pathport OCTO Pathway Connectivity
- AV Stumpfl PIXERA one AV Stumpfl
- Wireless Solution W-DMX BlackBox F-2 G6 Wireless Solution
- zactrack PRO zactrack
- Zero 88 FLX S48 Zero 88
What goes wrong with ACN
When someone on headset says "ACN" they almost always mean sACN (E1.31). They share a port and a root layer but not a purpose, and a device that speaks one does not necessarily speak the other at all.
ACN is a suite of documents plus EPIs that pin down discovery, addressing, port assignment and timeouts. Implementing SDT and DMP from the core documents alone will not give you anything interoperable.
DDL is the whole point and also the hard part. A device is only as self-describing as the DDL file the vendor shipped, and incomplete or stale descriptions are common.
SDT is session-based with membership and sequencing, so it carries state. Dropping and rejoining a session is not the free operation that restarting an sACN packet stream is.
Real-world deployment is narrow. ETC's Net3 and some Shure wireless gear use full ACN; most of the industry only ever met it through the sACN root layer, so third-party tooling is thin.
What goes wrong with sACN
Multicast without IGMP snooping configured on the switch turns into a broadcast storm. This is the single most common cause of "the network died when we patched the second console".
Priority is per-universe (0-200, default 100) and sources with equal priority get merged by the receiver, not by the sender. Two consoles at default priority will fight.
Universe numbering is 1-based here but many products expose a 0-based index internally. Always confirm against the receiving device, not the console.
Sources
- ANSI E1.17-2015 (R2025) — Architecture for Control Networks, free download — ESTA Technical Standards Program primary
- ANSI E1.17-2010 — Architecture for Control Networks (title, scope, revision history) — ESTA / ANSI webstore primary
- IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry (5568, sdt — Session Data Transport Multicast) — IANA primary
- Architecture for Control Networks (SDT, DMP, DDL, EPIs, relationship to E1.31, adoption) — Wikipedia