On Mon, Jul 05, 1999 at 11:45:57AM -0600, Gary L. Hennigan wrote:
> I gather I need a HUB or a switch for anything more than two hosts?
If you're using cat5. If you're just using coax cable, you don't need a
hub or switch and can just hang everything off the one wire.
> Which one? I believe I understand the difference. A hub acts as a
> simple amplifier. Any signal it receives on one of it's ports is
> amplified and sent to all it's other ports. A switch, if my
> understanding is correct, adds some smarts to the process and only
> sends the signals to relevant ports. So if machine A sends a packet to
> machine B that packet is only sent to the port that machine B is
That's about it. Hubs can have some smarts in them - they can cut off
hosts that are flooding the network and detect faulty cabling.
> connected to. Is there any advantage to a switch in a small home
> network? Money, at this level, really isn't the issue, but I don't
> want to spend extra money on a switch if it's overkill for a small
> network and doesn't really buy me anything.
Unless you find that your bandwidth is constantly saturated, I wouldn't
worry about a switch.
--
Mark Brown mailto:broonie@tardis.ed.ac.uk (Trying to avoid grumpiness)
http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~broonie/
EUFS http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/filmsoc/
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