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How many hubs before I need a repeater?

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Zathros

MIS
Dec 29, 2000
115
US
I'm running a small windows peer to peer network with an SCO Unix server. Presently, I have 3 hubs, all 8 port. I need to expand the system. Do I need a repeater if I add a hub? Or can I replace the 8 port hubs with 12 port hubs. I've got a vague idea of data transmission limits and I feel like I'm well under them distance wise. (longest run from a hub is 30 50 feet)
 
You certainly are better off if they are tree structured rather than end to end, just as you are better off if they are switches rather than hubs.

so long as the longest combined length of wire is under 100 meters (328 feet) you should not get late collisions.

If one location has enough devives for two 8 ports, you are better off with one 16 port, but it sounded like you only had 8 devices then 30 feet, then 8 more devices.

I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.
 
Here are the rules with Ethernet:

1) No single run can be more than 328 feet in length.
2) When using 10BASE-T (10 Meg) Ethernet, you should not have more than 4 hubs chained together.
3) When using 100BASE-T (100 Meg) you should not have more than 2 hubs chained together. Also, you should not have more than 205 meters of cable between any two devices. An example of this would be 100 meters from the PC to the hub, 5 meters between the hubs, and 100 meters from the second hub to the other PC.
4) When you place a Switch between two hubs, all of the rules start over. For example, you can have 4 hubs chained together, then a switch, then 4 more hubs chained together.

Just to clarify terms, a hub is a repeater. One problem with many of the equipment vendors is they label some devices as hubs that really act like switches. Dual speed hubs are repeaters for those devices running at the same speed and switches for those running at different speeds.

All of the users connected to the same group of hubs must share the same bandwidth. This is one drawback of hooking a bunch of hubs together. One of the best methods is to put a switch in the middle and connect the uplink port of each of the hubs to a port on the switch. This way each hub has its own switch port and the users on that hub are only contending with each other.

Hope this helps...

mpennac
 
Didn't mean to repeat Jimbopalmer, it took me so long to type that reply he got his posted before mine...

mpennac
 
But because you took more time yours is more complete, and different viewpoints on a problem can result in more understand of a problem!

there are VERY few 100 meg hubs out there, thankfully, most everyone wants switches if they care enough about speed to want 100 meg

I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.
 
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