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IJ Reilly

macrumors P6
Original poster
Jul 16, 2002
17,912
1,506
Palookaville
Back when I first set up my ethernet network, I bought a five-port ethernet hub. Now I need more ports, but I can't find anyone selling a "hub," only "switches." Can anyone explain the difference?

Thanks!
 
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 :) )
 
IJ Reilly said:
Back when I first set up my ethernet network, I bought a five-port ethernet hub. Now I need more ports, but I can't find anyone selling a "hub," only "switches." Can anyone explain the difference?

Thanks!
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.
 
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