Networking Question...

[MusashiM]

what is the difference between a hub, switch, and router?

[nhbilly]

hub - packet are boradcast to all port, and share bandwith of hub
switch paceket are broadcast to a specific port that was requested from

rounter - a hardware firewall/switch....prevent intrustion of your network...supposedly



hope this help...hope I am right too : )

[MusashiM]

yeah, well I've set up a network on a hub... I was just wondering what was different about a router and switch..

[joe52985]

from what i know a switch is supposed to also cut down on packet collision when u have more computers on your network because it handles packets from specific ports insted of broardcasting to all ports. I run a switch and have a lag free fast network, even when i have 4 comps hooked up for some lan party action. if u plan on putting more comps on the network switch is better

question:

I have a router also but i dont use it, the router is nice and i want to put it into use, how can i set it up with my switch and comps?

[jkusar]

If your running only two computers on a network, it makes no real difference whether you use a hub or a switch as far as available bandwidth. However, a switch operates in full-duplex (able to send and receive data at the same time) whereas most hubs only operate at half-duplex (send or receive data, but not both at the same time).

Once you have more than two computers, the speed difference between a hub and switch grows exponentially. A 100Mbit switch can allow all computers to utilize 100Mbit simultaniously, whereas a 100Mbit hub only allows the total bandwidth to be 100Mbit.

So, if you are only running a small number of computer (say, less than ten), you can probably get by with just a hub, unless you do a LOT of data transfers across your network. Once the number of computers gets above that, though, I would strongly recommend a switch.

A router is a different piece of hardware entirely. It is used to connect two separate physical networks together and allow them to communicate with each other. It doesn't sound like this is what you want.

-Jason

[MusashiM]

Thanks jkusar, that's everything I wanted to know...