[geeks] My first ebay sale

[Tim H.]

On Fri, 19 Jul 2002 21:16:28 +0200
"William S." <wstan at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> What is the difference here between a hub and a switch?
> Are those terms used interchangeably now?
> I will be needing one soon I think that is at least 8 port.

Terms are only mixed by shady companies selling "switching hubs" which
means, as far as I can tell, that they just have autonegotiating ports,
but still are hubs, so they must have store and forward buffers, but no
mac address buffer/logic.

Switches are better for network speed and security, you can't see other
conversations on a switch.  Small dumb switches you really cannot see
other conversations at all, which makes sniffing difficult for diagnosis
of problems, intelligent switches allow you to mirror ports, so you can
sniff other conversations if you need to.

Hubs are cheaper, and for most home networks a hub is more than
sufficient.  However, a lot of people who post here definitely do not
have "most home networks".  I am running a switched network at home,
which lets me do big transfers between machines, while not interfering
with my wife doing something on the internet, lets my daughter play her
edugames off network shares instead of letting her ruin the CDs, while
not interfering with anything I am doing, stuff like that.  Hopefully in
the future it will allow me to stream video around the network and let
me get rid of TV cable runs, and not interfere with the audio streaming,
daughter's games, wife's email, my large transfers, you get the picture.

For a small network the sniffing problem of cheap switches can be
remedied by getting a little cheap hub and temporarily plugging it into
the physical line you want to sniff.

Tim