Switches >>>> Hubs

It's much feasible to generate a computer network based only on hubs, but there are a few reasons why this is not recommended, despite the fact they are cheaper than switches. Switches are fundamentally the same as hubs, but a small bit smarter. This editorial discusses the small difference between hubs & switches, as well as the benefits that using switches in lieu of hubs brings.

Hubs are widely thought of as dumb pieces of networking equipment. They do their job of forwarding knowledge across a network, but that is all they can doing. The way they forward knowledge is extravagant, in terms of adding traffic onto the network. In the event you have0 PC's connected to a0 port hub & the PC connected to port wishes to speak to the PC connected to port, the hubs' only option is to broadcast the knowledge down all of the ports, so every PC is sent the knowledge despite it only being addressed to the PC on port. You can see how extravagant this is.

A switch is slightly different, they are more intelligent; the switch maintains a table, called an ARP table (Address Resolution Protocol) of all PC's connected. The table cross references each port on the switch with the hardware address, also often called the MAC address, of the gizmo connected to that port. Using the example above, if the PC on port wishes to speak to the PC on port, it sends the knowledge to the switch including the MAC address of the PC on port, the switch then looks up the location of the PC based on the ARP table & the MAC address provided; the switch knows to forward the knowledge to port only. This makes use of up fewer resources & creates less traffic on the network.

Sure you could have a tiny network of0 PC's jogging perfectly fine using a hub, but that is missing the point. As a network grows, the more important it becomes to manage the amount of traffic on the network. This is a essential idea of network design. They ought to understand from this that a network design based on hubs suffers from poor scalability. Another benefit of using switches in lieu of hubs is that they virtually eliminate collisions; a collision occurs when computers try to transmit knowledge on the same wire simultaneously, both sets of knowledge are lost because they crash in to each other. The bigger the hub based network, the more likely that collisions are going to happen, everything else being equal. When knowledge is lost due to collisions, the computers have no choice but to resend the lost knowledge, which means that it is likely to take longer sending a piece of knowledge using a hub than a switch.

There they have it, switches take less time to transmit knowledge when compared to a hub, they use less resources, generate less network traffic, are more smart & far more scalable. So when your boss asks you to look in to networking all the PC's within your company together, you can document the plenty of reasons why it is worth spending a tiny bit more & going with switches.