To be able to hook two or more computers to each other, you will need
either a hub or a switch. Both devices essentially provide the same
function, but behind-the-scenes, they achieve this goal in different ways.
|
Linksys 5-port 10/100 Hub |
Linksys 5-port 10/100 Switch |
Hard to tell the difference between the two, right? Aside from the fact
that the one on the right has an extra row of lights, and might cost a
little more, these devices are very hard to tell apart. Many companies
make hubs and switches that look exactly alike, aside from the wording on
the label or box.
So what's the difference?
When network devices communicate, they send out their data in packets. A
hub receives the packets from the device sending them, then repeats the
packets to each port on the hub. But a switch is a little smarter than a
hub, and this is where the difference is. Every network device has a
unique address, called the Hardware or
MAC address. A switch keeps track
of these Hardware addresses, making note of which port a device is on.
When it receives a packet, it looks at the destination address, and only
sends it to the port with that device.
For your home or small office network, this difference is very negligible.
Most home and small office networks hardly make full use of network
resources to begin with, so the only difference here is price. But if you
work for a company that has multiple floors in a building, you might want
to get a switch for each floor of the building, and a switch to connect
them all together. This way, your entire network isn't slowed down when
three people in neighboring cubicles decide to play a lunchtime game of Halflife
or some other network game, because they are only affecting their
connections, not everyone else's.
Hubs and switches come in many different shapes and sizes. They can be as
small as 5 ports, like the ones pictured above, or they can
be massive rack-mounted systems, with 48 or more ports to them.
More advanced hubs might have different modules (transceivers) you can purchase,
depending on what kind of backbone your network has. These modules could
include gigabit ethernet, fiber optic, or other kinds of
connections, allowing the hub or switch to be connected to any kind of network.
Hubs and switches also have a speed associated with them. The speed not
only says how fast it can communicate, but it can also limit the kinds of
devices that can connect to it. For example, some print servers and
network printers only have a 10BaseT port on them. These devices would not
work properly when connected to a 100BaseTX hub or switch, because the
device doesn't know how to communicate at a lower speed. Some support multiple speeds, falling back to a speed that the device
connected can use properly. These are typically shown with just the
numbers of the speeds that can be used with the hub (i.e. a 10/100 hub
supports both 10BaseT and 100BaseTX devices).
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