The choice between hubs and switches is pretty easy, we’ll show why. When designing and building a network, even a home network choice of good networking devices is pivotal for that network.
The need for this is that the devices chosen should be such that scaling up a small network should be no problem, and the interconnectivity is not compromised at any cost and that’s why the selection for the right device is so critical.
I’m saying critical because one must understand what is required from the network and how to get it in the most economical and efficient way.
To start with, why do we use networking devices, simple, to connect and share various resources as computers, printers etc.
Hub is nothing but a multi-port repeater, as in, it is a fairly unsophisticated and unintelligent device which is just meant for a few computers to get plugged together. Now, you might think that’s the objective, to connect multiple computers.
On the face it looks that easy but it isn’t so, you want to connect multiple computers but you want to exchange and share data in an efficient manner without losing anything and here hubs fail and switches excel.
By default hubs are single broadcast and single collision domain, which means a device transmitting at a time, transmits to all the devices in the network i.e. it broadcasts every time and every device on the network listens to that broadcast and the one which it is meant for picks it up.
It’s anyone’s guess that how efficiently it will work, its okay with one or two or three devices in a network but with network scaling up and more and more devices being connected to it the network dies down.
How often we listen the complaints in office or home that the network being slow or down, if there are hubs in the picture that’s what going to happen, because there is no way with hubs you can control LAN traffic congestion.
One way to make an ever increasing network is to segment a network in smaller part and that’s when the switches come into picture.
Switches are much more than multi-port repeaters, they are quite intelligent in a way that they recognize the devices connected to it by their addresses, so there is no need to broadcast every time one device want to share something or exchange information with another device.
It’s like now when hubs are gone I can talk to my friend by addressing him by name, otherwise with hubs it was like I had to shout from the rooftop for everybody to listen even though they didn’t want to, what I wanted to say to my friend. So the above explanations make switches a single broadcast and multiple collision domains.
It broadcasts only in one scenario in which it does not have information about a device in its mapping table for which a particular piece of info is transmitted, so it broadcasts that info that one time and after finding about the device which accepts that it updates it table.
Also hubs operate in half duplex while switches can operate in full duplex mode too. Adding a switch adds a lot of functionality to the network and improves the efficiency of the network too. You can still use hubs as per your networking needs but try using at least one switch in case of a multiple hub network by plugging the hubs to the switch, but an all switched LAN is just always better and I think I’ve provided enough evidence for that.
We have a variety of switches to offer varying in transmission speeds to number of ports to operating modes and also which are easily manageable and are easily replaceable also to replace hubs just remove the hub and plug the devices into our switch and its ready to go, its really that easy.
Now the ball is in your court, you are to decide what is better for your network. Remember, you have a wide range of AD-Net switches available for your research and purchase.
Start your research on the switches NOW, checking our selection
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Testimonials
Lomoveishiy – Finland
I needed those to connect my PC on the third floor to have internet access in that room, and ISP installed their modem on the first floor only. After dropping fiber patch cables, plugged in all cables into these media converters at both sides, and link came up instantly. Was much easier than I thought!
