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Art-Net vs sACN

Which should I use for network DMX? 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

Art-NetsACN
Categorylighting-controllighting-control
FlowControl — small, urgent, must arriveControl — small, urgent, must arrive
PortsUDP 6454UDP 5568
Transportudpudp
Multicastno239.255.0.0/16 (IPv4, universe in low two octets), FF18::83:00:00:00/104 (IPv6)
Addressing15-bit Port-Address split into Net (7 bits), Sub-Net (4 bits) and Universe (4 bits), giving 32768 addressable universes of 512 slots.512 slots per universe; universes 1-63999, plus 64214 for E1.31 discovery.
Spec availabilityopen-publishedopen-published
StewardArtistic Licence Engineering LtdESTA (Entertainment Services and Technology Association)
First published19982009
Statuscurrentcurrent
Our confidenceverifiedverified

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 (74)

These are the safe choices if you have not committed to either, or need to bridge the two.

Art-Net only (30)

sACN only (2)

What goes wrong with Art-Net

Classic Art-Net broadcasts to 2.255.255.255 or 10.255.255.255, which is why the old convention is 2.x.x.x addressing with a /8 mask. Putting Art-Net on a 192.168.x.x network works, but broadcast then hits every device on the subnet.
Net/Sub-Net/Universe versus a flat universe number is the classic patch error. A device showing "universe 0" may mean Port-Address 0, which many consoles display as universe 1.
ArtSync exists to avoid tearing on large pixel rigs, but many nodes ignore it. If pixels shear across a fade, check sync support before blaming the switch.

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

Disagree with any of this?

Every claim above comes from one of the two entries and carries a source. If one is wrong, correcting it is a single file and it fixes this page automatically. Edit Art-Net or edit sACN.