What is Sig-Net™, and why should I care?

If you've ever patched an sACN network or chased an Art-Net problem, you already know roughly nine-tenths of how Sig-Net works. The new bit isn't really about lighting at all — it's about the law.

The EU Cyber Resilience Act and a growing pile of similar legislation (UK PSTI, California SB-327, Oregon HB-2395) increasingly say that any networked product sold in those markets has to meet some baseline cybersecurity standard. That includes our world. A moving light is, technically, a "product with digital elements". And while a regulator probably isn't going to lose sleep over the channel value of dimmer 12, manufacturers do have to show their homework.

Sig-Net is a lighting protocol designed with that homework already done.

Who's planning on using it?

Sig-Net is new — the V1.0 specification was published in May 2026 — but it has arrived with serious industry backing. The partners list on sig-net.net/partners currently includes more than twenty companies including most of the heavy hitters.

What it actually is

Sig-Net is a way of carrying DMX, RDM, timecode and firmware updates across an IP network — the same job sACN and Art-Net already do. The difference is that every packet carries a cryptographic signature, so a stranger plugging a laptop into the show LAN can't forge commands or replay an old blackout cue.

It's designed by Singularity (UK) Ltd, licensed royalty-free to anyone who wants to build a product around it, and built on well-understood internet plumbing (CoAP over UDP, HMAC-SHA256 signatures). It deliberately reuses the parts of sACN, Art-Net and IoT protocols that have proven themselves, and only invents new things where it has to.

What it isn't

Sig-Net is not encrypted. The DMX values travel in plain sight, just like sACN — anyone who can already see the rig can already see the levels. What's locked down is the ability to change anything without permission.

Sig-Net is not a brand-new transport. It rides on the same Ethernet you already have. Your switches, cabling and VLANs all stay.

Sig-Net is not a centralised, broker-based system like RDMnet. There's no server that has to be alive for the show to run.

Where you'll meet it

Anywhere you currently use sACN or Art-Net is a candidate. Touring shows. House venues. Themed entertainment. Broadcast Studios. Architectural lighting in public buildings, hotels and retail (the audit-sensitive end of the industry). Air-gapped show networks — Sig-Net needs no internet, no NTP, no DNS to work, so it's perfectly happy in an isolated environment.

What's coming in this series

Over the next set posts we'll walk through Sig-Net the same way you'd walk through a fit-up: who the players are, how they talk, how they interact, what happens when something breaks, and how the security side actually behaves day-to-day.

Next up: meet the Manager — the role that runs discovery, patches fixtures and onboards the gear.

This series is based on v1.0 of the Sig-Net spec - visit Sig-Net.net for any updates.