As the AES67 interoperability standard continues to gain traction, so the need for
tools to facilitate interoperability increases. ALC NetworX, developers of the high
performance RAVENNA audio networking technology, is therefore pleased to
announce the release of RAV2SAP, an extremely useful RAVENNA-to-SAP freeware
conversion tool designed to help connect RAVENNA devices to other AES67 devices.

ALC NetworX’s Andreas Hildebrand explains why RAV2SAP is important. “Most
people would agree that, in an ideal world, when setting up a network, it would be
wonderful not to be limited in one’s choice of devices on the network, or indeed
one’s choice of network protocol because of incompatibility issues. The AES67
standard for high performance AoIP interoperability was published in 2013 in order
to provide some common ground and basic guidelines for manufacturers wishing to
incorporate interoperability capabilities into their products.’

Crucial to the success of any network is connection management between devices
and the exchange of SDP data which describes specific stream characteristics and
connection information. The AES67 standard doesn’t mandate for any specific
connection management methods as different solutions exist depending on the
application. In RAVENNA, the SDP data is conveyed via the RTSP protocol which is a
common method in layer 3 (IP) streaming applications. Other systems, in particular
Audinate’s Dante™ protocol, exclusively utilize the SAP protocol for SDP data
transfer. However, since they offer no manual means for SDP data read-out or
entry, they cannot connect to other AES67 devices unless these also support SAP.

“While some RAVENNA devices have implemented SAP in addition to RAVENNA’s
standard SDP data exchange method, we felt that interconnectivity would be greatly
facilitated if a generic RAVENNA-to-SAP converter providing a translation service
between RAVENNA and SAP announcements were available,’ observed Hildebrand.
“Furthermore, since the RAV2SAP converter supports manual entry and read-out of
SDP data as well as automatic translation, it also enables devices not adhering to
the RAVENNA or Dante technology realm to connect to any available AES67 stream
via manual SDP data exchange, as well as acting as a great diagnostic tool for
monitoring exchanged SDP data.

Hildebrand concludes: “Since RAVENNA and AES67 are both based on an open
technology approach utilizing the same principles and protocols, and RAVENNA has
always advocated open interconnectivity, we decided to make the converter
available as a freeware tool, downloadable from the RAVENNA website.’

For further information, please visit: http://www.ravenna-
network.com/using-ravenna/support/rav2sap/