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Will Marcouiller
Asked: 2011-01-22 09:51:12 +0800 CST

What is the difference between a hub and a switch?

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I'm sneeking around online store for used stock of hubs, routers and switches for a project I have to build a network infrastructure.

So far, I have bought:

  1. 1x Cisco 2514 Router;
  2. 5x Cisco Serial Transceivers;
  3. 1x 24-port Cisco Catalyst switch.

I have souvenirs of having seen switches and hubs connected altogether, and remember that there is an advantage of some sort using such architecture, but I don't remember correctly, it's quite fuzzy in my mind as I am no network administrator, but a system developer.

I know that a switch builds itself a table of something to map the different connections, but can't remember excatly what it is. So my question is the following:

What is the difference between a hub and a switch?

Any answer is appreciated!

Thanks! =)

switch diff ethernet

4 Answers

  1. A hub uses no logic to determine what to do with an incoming packet, it is simply blasted out all other ports once it is received. Conversely a switch uses layer 2 routing to determine the correct logical path by keeping a record of what hosts have communicated in the past (ARP tables).

    Hubs are known for causing network congestion due to the increased overhead and Ethernet collisions.

    Friends don't let friends buy hubs.

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  2. Best Answer

    Hubs are dumb.

    But seriously, Read this.

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  3. Old style passive hubs broadcasted all packets to all ports. These are no longer used and no longer available. They were later replaced by fasthubs and whatnot. The word Hub vs Switch is only a marketing choice.

    Expensive switches have layer3 (IP) filtering, VLANs and HTTP interfaces. No need to get one though if $20 gigabit hub is enough.

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  4. Just want to add more differences here:

    1. collision:

    All computers connected to hub will have same collision domain, and in switch, they are not because of independence.

    1. performance:

    Switch checks the Ethernet address to see which port is the destination, it also handles traffic. Say, if two data frames are sent to the same port simultaneously, switch has the buffer that can temporarily queue the incoming data.

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