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Networking 101
... continued
Now we've
used to new words, hub and switch. When a computer connected to
a hub sends out a packet, it acts like a broadcast, so each port gets
a copy of that packet, even though that computer may not have
requested it. What does this mean? Well, in short this
means that the bandwidth is shared between all the computers
connected to the hub. So if you have a 10Mb hub, the total
network speed is 10Mb and is shared between all the ports on the hub.
A switch
on the other hand handles packets on a computer by computer
basis. This means that each computer has a private channel to
the machine it is talking to. So if you have an 8 port 100Mb
hub, you've got a total of 100Mbs of bandwidth per connection on your Network.
Currently
with the cost of switches what they, it makes no sense to purchase
anything but a switch.
 
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