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What's the difference betwen a hub and a switch?
- Thread starter IJ Reilly
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iMeowbot
macrumors G3
As far as the "how do I set up my network" part of it goes, there is no practical difference. A switch is pretty much the same thing as a hub, only smarter.
Where a traditional hub would broadcast every packet to every port, a switch only sends traffic down the line where the wanted MAC* has been seen. Broadcasts, of course, are still sent down all the ports. The benefit is when you have a lot of LAN traffic, only the affected segments get saturated, leaving other lines to carry other traffic.
*(That's MAC as in Ethernet controller -- forgot where I was 🙂 )
Where a traditional hub would broadcast every packet to every port, a switch only sends traffic down the line where the wanted MAC* has been seen. Broadcasts, of course, are still sent down all the ports. The benefit is when you have a lot of LAN traffic, only the affected segments get saturated, leaving other lines to carry other traffic.
*(That's MAC as in Ethernet controller -- forgot where I was 🙂 )
Get a switch. In most cases you will not be doing anything that needs a dumb hub. However, a switch does better when you have devices that. operate at different ethernet speeds.IJ Reilly said: