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Hubs and Switches
- Thread starter JOPTIC
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I assume you are talking about Ethernet:
Hub - officially called 'repeater': Signals received on a port are electrically regenerated (cleaned and amplified) and sent out on all other ports. Collisions (which are btw. quite normal and not an error) are also signalled to all ports. All ports have to be the same speed.
Switch - formerly called 'bridge': Frames received on a port are analyzed. The source address is recorded in a table, together with the port number. The destination address is checked against this table and, if found, the frame is only sent out on this specific port. This conserves bandwidth by sending frames only to the port to which they belong and there can be multiple conversations between different ports going on at the same time. Ports can have different speeds (10/100/1000Mbit/s).
There are 'Dual-Speed Hubs' which basically consist of a 10Mbit/s repeater and a 100Mbit/s repeater. Both repeaters are connected via an internal 2-port switch to provide a path between the differing speeds. Speed on a port is automatically detected and the port is connected to the appropriate repater.
Just to confuse the russians, there is also the term 'Switching Hub' (shudder
), which in most cases is equivalent to a switch.
There is, of course, much more to it, but these are the basic differences.
Cheers *Rob
Hub - officially called 'repeater': Signals received on a port are electrically regenerated (cleaned and amplified) and sent out on all other ports. Collisions (which are btw. quite normal and not an error) are also signalled to all ports. All ports have to be the same speed.
Switch - formerly called 'bridge': Frames received on a port are analyzed. The source address is recorded in a table, together with the port number. The destination address is checked against this table and, if found, the frame is only sent out on this specific port. This conserves bandwidth by sending frames only to the port to which they belong and there can be multiple conversations between different ports going on at the same time. Ports can have different speeds (10/100/1000Mbit/s).
There are 'Dual-Speed Hubs' which basically consist of a 10Mbit/s repeater and a 100Mbit/s repeater. Both repeaters are connected via an internal 2-port switch to provide a path between the differing speeds. Speed on a port is automatically detected and the port is connected to the appropriate repater.
Just to confuse the russians, there is also the term 'Switching Hub' (shudder
), which in most cases is equivalent to a switch.There is, of course, much more to it, but these are the basic differences.
Cheers *Rob
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