[PIC] Re: Microchip ENC parts

You're right! A topic tag does help. The product I'm maintaining was
designed in 2010 and uses the ENC28J60. The ENC28J60 can do half or full
duplex, but does not support autonegotiaion. The ENC424J600 does
autonegotiation and 100 Mbps. I think it is a step in the right direction
for this project.

My understanding of multicast is that an endpoint subscribes to the stream
which then causes the incoming stream to be sent out the switch port going
to that endpoint. If the switch does not know how to handle that, it
converts the multicast stream to broadcast, sending it everywhere. In this
case, there is multichannel audio being multicast. If it gets converted to
broadcast and sent to my device with the ENC28J60, there is severe packet
loss and TCP connections get dropped.

At this point, I'm thinking of switching to the ENC424J600. I have
Microchip Library for Applications code for this chip, so it MIGHT just
drop in. Then I have to get customers to configure their networks so they
do not flood everything.

THANKS for the response!

Harold
https://w6iwi.org




On Tue, December 23, 2025 9:38 pm, Justin Richards wrote:
> Topic tags may help.
>
>
> I have no drop in chip recommendations but have related annecdotes:-
>
>
> I had many issues with a development board PIC-OLIMEX-MAXI that also used
>  ENC28J60 10 Mbps to run my sprinkers and swipe card.
>
>
> It was ok with a cisco router but it failed so got a new Tenda TEG1050F
> *10*/100/1000M 48 port + 2 SFP Ethernet switch.  It says 10M but could not
>  get PIC-OLIMEX-MAXI it to connect.  Ported sprinkers to ESP8266
>
> When I was studying for CCNA I did a deep dive into multicast with my
> limited knowledge and concluded there is no such thing in practice.  From
> memory I  used VLC to create a stream that other VLCs could subscribe to
> using multicast addresses and seemed that every subscription was a
> unicast subscription.  Discussed with my lecturer and he said he is no
> longer surprised by the way devices deviate from expected behaviour.  I
> was hoping he would prove me wrong.
>
> Years later I repeated the experiment with multicasting video from a
> satelite reciever.  The device supported multicast but it hammered the
> local network to the extremities causing some devices to stop responding
> regardless of the switch they were connected to.  It was a multi vendor
> network, with a variety of netgear, cisco and ubiquity switches.
>
> Justin
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 23, 2025 at 1:03 PM Harold Hallikainen
> <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>
>> I have a product designed in 2010 that uses the ENC28J60 10 Mbps
>> Ethernet
>> controller chip. The system uses the Microchip Library for Applications
>> (MLA) and is maintained with MPLAB8.
>>
>>
>> In installations, I'm having issues with the wire being saturated by
>> multicast audio being sent to the product. The switch should NOT be
>> sending the multicast audio out this port, but apparently the switch is
>>  dumbly converting the multicast to broadcast and sending it out every
>> port. The saturated wire is keeping data from getting to my product.
>>
>> I am looking at changing to the ENC424J600, which supports 100 Mbps and
>>  autonegotiation. It is also supported by the MLA.
>>
>> I'm not aware of any other chips that would be supported by the MLA and
>>  the rest of my code, which is based on the MLA. I'm using the SPI
>> interface to the ENC chip with a PIC24H controller.
>>
>> So... are there any other Ethernet chips similar to these two that
>> could "drop in?"
>>
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>>
>> Harold
>> https://w6iwi.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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