High performance digital audio interconnection over 100Mbit/s Ethernet. Can be created using specialised routers, such as the Midas DL461 Audio System Signal Router, which can provide channel-by-channel audio routing (like a patch bay), as well as packet switching for the auxiliary data messages. This approach offers robust, low-latency and deterministic latency audio routing, with the benefits of a true packet-switched network for the control data. Routing is centralised, not distributed, giving better latency control, better reliability and finer routing granularity than distributed audio networks. It uses Ethernet frames transmitted over the physical layer only of the Ethernet technology – the cables and transceivers at each end. A deterministic protocol is used that is essentially a time-division multiplex (TDM) at the hardware level.