What is the Difference between hubs and switches?

Answer 1

While a hub (simpler, cheaper)shares the total bandwidth among all users, a switch gives a dedicated, full bandwidth between every two devices communicating with each other. In a small home or office, a hub is generally sufficient. However, if many users often transmit large files, the switch may help eliminate congestion.

Answer 2

While a hub (simpler, cheaper)shares the total bandwidth among all users, a switch gives a dedicated, full bandwidth between every two devices communicating with each other. In a small home or office, a hub is generally sufficient. However, if many users often transmit large files, the switch may help eliminate congestion.

Answer 3

Hub operates on layer 1, all traffic from all nodes is sent to every other node on the hub.

Switches operate on layer 2, and use the MAC address of the nodes to determine which node to send the packet to.

Answer 4

A hub sends traffic to all ports in the hub regardless of the destination computer.

A switch attempts to send traffic only to the port where it expects the destination computer to be connected.

Generally a switch will improve performance because 'uninvolved' computers do not have to handle unnecessary traffic.

Answer 5

A hub is typically the least expensive, least intelligent, and least complicated of the three. Its job is very simple: anything that comes in one port is sent out to the others. That's it. Every computer connected to the hub "sees" everything that every other computer on the hub sees. The hub itself is blissfully ignorant of the data being transmitted. For years, simple hubs have been quick and easy ways to connect computers in small networks.

A switch does essentially what a hub does but more efficiently. By paying attention to the traffic that comes across it, it can "learn" where particular addresses are. For example, if it sees traffic from machine A coming in on port 2, it now knows that machine A is connected to that port and that traffic tomachine A needs to only be sent to that port and not any of the others. The net result of using a switch over a hub is that most of the network traffic only goes where it needs to rather than to every port. On busy networks this can make the network significantly faster."Varying degrees of magic happen inside the device, and therein lies the difference."