Network Connectivity

[Michael Hughes]

At our office we are having some serious issues with the
speed (lack of) of our network. I was told that a
network switch would be faster than a network hub?????
Can anyone tell me what a network switch is and how's it
different from a network hub?

We are running Win 2000 server with all available updates.

We are also considering upgrading to 2003 server. Does
anyone know if this would speed up our network.

Any help will be appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[Tony_H]

To keep it nice and simple, the main difference between
switch and hub is that the hub usually works only at 10MB
and is shared Tx and RX. This will lead to collisions on
the network ( but is entirely normal ) which is catered
for using CSMA/CD. A switch will work at either 10MB or
100MB and is full duplex. ie you can transmit and receive
at the same time. This can technically "bump up your
throughput speed " to 200MB. It is never achieved in
practice !!

You dont say how many PC's you have connected and what the
NIC's are.

If they are modern onboard NIC's then they will be capable
of running 100MB Full Duplex. Nowadays the price per
port of a decent switch has fallen dramatically, and there
are many good switches moderately priced out there in the
market place.

I use a hub ONLY at home on a small 4 pc network and that
is only for Internet Sharing. Otherwise its a switched
100MB the rest of the time.

I cannot answer the query re Server 2003...as I havent a
clue ...... sorry..


Tony

 

[Daniel Cooper]

a hub shares the bandwidth between the ports, so for
instance if u had a 10 port hub with a speed of 100 each
port would get 10mbs bandwidth, whereas id u had a switch
with a 100 mb each port gets 100mb