Difference between Switch and Hub

[generalgman]

What is the difference between a hub and a switch? The switch is better right?

 

[ken38]

Yes switches are better.
When a packet comes into a hub, it will go out on all outgoing ports and looks for the recieving computer. A switch memorizes the hardware addresses of all the NIC connected to its outgoing ports so it knows exactly where to send the packet to. Therefore, each port on a switch has a dedicated line speed that's equal to the incomming speed. All outgoing ports on a hub share the incomming speed. That's what make the switch better.
In short, a switch is basically a smart hub.

 

[Cenalian]

Another big advantage??? A swith will create its own collision domain , therefore enabling every device on the network to communicate at the same time.... with a hub, only 1 device can communicate at any given time.

If you were looking at a somewhat expensive hub, get a switch. If you were looking at a cheap hub for a small home network (3 or less computers), go with the hub... its cheaper, and on a small network like that, it will do the job just fine.

 

[Kewlb]

You might also want to take note that more advanced switches (such as cisco) offer way more then just the basic functions of a switch. You can seperate your network into VLAN's (designate a certain range of ports to be its own broadcast domain, thus seperating out the ammount of broadcasts done cutting down on bandwith.) also VTP (virtual trunking protocol) which allows you to configure every switch via the console of one switch. STP (Spanning tree protocol) prevents loops from happening which cuts down on bandwith usage and lost packets. So a switch is by far better then a hub.

 

[JackMDS]

The Info above contains a lot of good info about Hub, and Switch.

However, you should know that for practical purposes, if you are running small network (few computers), it does not matter.


Hub vs Switch testing