[Sussex] Re: Sourcing list of hardware

[John Crowhurst]

On Tue, October 24, 2006 20:36, Fay Zee wrote:
> Hi Dave,
>
> On 20/10/06, David Chapman <dokterdave at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> I have patch cables about 1m
>> And 2x 16 port 10bit hubs, not switches.
>> Think I have a router ?
>
> Thanks for replying. I'm not yet totally clear about the difference
> between a hub and a switch, or which is best for this situation. It's
> a training courseroom with 12 student PCs, the tutor's two laptops, a
> firewall machine and a couple of servers. However, there are also 12
> free positions which need Internet connection occasionally.

A hub simply passes information between the ports, just think of it as an
extension lead for network cables. You can't connect devices at different
speeds and network collisions are simply passed on. In the OSI model, a
hub is a layer 1 or hardware device.

A switch intelligently manages each of its ports so that collisions are
reduced and different speeds are catered for (on a port by port basis)
Switches look at the mac address being passed between the ports and sends
the packets to the right port. A switch is a layer 2 or data link layer
device.

--
John