Message-ID: <3A4C8C08.FBFC8CF8@home.nl> Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 14:05:12 +0100 From: "M.C. Broersma" <mc.broersma@home.nl> Subject: Re: [SLE] [OT] Hub vs. Switch Lee wrote:
Hi there,
Perhaps someone can give me a straight answer to this. What is best to use for a medium sized, 100mbit, possibly heavy used network? Hubs or switches?
Also, can someone *please* explain to me what a switch is, what it does, and how it differs from a hub, and if there are any problems with using switches directly in place of hubs (except for cost.)
I'd be indebted to anyone who can offer some UserFriendly advice here.
Hallo I tried to post this message earlier, but SuSE didn't accepted my messages because I a used one of my other E-mail reply addresses Like Christopher Reimer wrote, a hub sends all data to all ports and a switch is intelligent and separates the network traffic. It will control the traffic direction on basis of the MAC addresses of the computers connected to his ports. This has also a security advantage, because if computer A en B are talking and computer C is monitoring the network traffic, then this traffic will not be seen by computer C. But the single fact of traffic separation doesn't mean that ethernet traffic via a Switch is faster than via a Hub. The explanation of Christopher about traffic light and cops is a little bit to simple. A switch is only faster if it can handle more connection at the same time, so internally it must have a bandwidth of 2 or more times the 100mb/s of a single network connection. I advise you to take a look at the internal bandwidth specification before you buy a switch. My expirience about more complicated highly configurable switches is, that they may contain firmware/software bugs which can cause a lot of trouble in your network. Minze Broersma