Can someone explain in details the differences between Hubs, Switches and Routers ?
Also, what topology does Routers use and what are their Standard Compliance and maximum transmission rate ?
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Hubs are dumb and connect all ports to a broadcast domain (all ports hear all traffic)
Switches are more sophisticated and connect only the ports that exchange traffic (after the switch sets up a table, which MAC address goes to which port)
Routers know, where to send traffic and can send the traffic to a specific location
Just read the EE-conversation at
http://www.experts-exchang
... to get more knowledge
Holger
Transmission rate
Hub: fair ... all ports share the 10/100 Mbps connection rate
switch: good (up to very good) ... ideal, two ports get the full transmission capacity of the line. Another plus: If one NIC is 10Mbps, the other connections aren't limited to that speed (as is at the hub!)
router: fair ... the router has too much to do with controlling the routes... so if you have two high speed connections with extensive use, better get them near and connected via switch.
the router is the only means of these three, to break up the logical assembly of the network (if one net can talk to another and so on)
Here's another thread that you can read.... this question has been asked many many times...
http://www.experts-exchang
A hub, also known as a multi-port repeater, operates at layer 1 of the OSI model and repeats recevied traffic to all ports as it retransmits it without any processing. However, be aware, if you want to buy a hub these days, there is a very high liklihood that it's a hybrid switch - the 10Mb segment is bridged/switched to the 100Mb segment. So, if you're into packet capture, you can't see all the traffic between the two 10 and 100 Mb. segments.
A switch is also known as a multi-port bridge. A switch will receive the signals and actually "read" the frame to determin the source address (layer 2 ethernet/MAC/physical address) and the destination address and put these into a table. If there wasn't a prior table entry as to where the destination address is located - which port it's on - it will transmit to all ports or flood the traffic and then look for a reply. When the reply comes, it will make a note of the source and destination in its tables and henceforward will switch all traffic from port A to port B and NOT flood it out all ports anymore.
A router operates at layer 3 of the OSI model. A router will get traffic as described above, but read more into the frame actually into the packet information looking for layer 3 Network addresses (the IP address) and note the source and destination. If the router has rules for routing the traffic depending on the destination address, it will follow its rules (its routing table). If it doesn't know what to do with it, it will send it to its default route. This is usually in the direction of the Internet in networks which are attached to the Internet.
These are very basic descriptions. Over time, more and more functionality, features, benefits have been added to these devices including giving them the ability to cross definitions and layers to give them the capabilities of other devices - such as a Layer 3 switch - a switch which can route.
As far as topologies go, switches and routers offer more redundancy and fault tolerance in a mesh or partial mesh configuration. As far as max transmission rate, that just depends on what you want to connect it to. You can have routers and switches which operate from 56k up to OC192 and beyond. You can have Ethernet attached switches and routers from 10Mb to 10Gb (with 40Gb in development).
For more information check out howthingswork.com, practicallynetworked.com, and google.com.
Hope this helps.
>>As far as max transmission rate, that just depends on what you want to connect it to. You can have routers and switches which operate from 56k up to OC192 and beyond.
The speed of the switch/router doesn't depend on the speed of the line ... even if the router has to be quicker at high speed interfaces ...
You have a latency time in the switch and router , where the router has much more to do (it has to compare more tables and rules) ... so if you want to achieve the same speed with a router it will be much more expensive
A grading of C is inappropriate for such a detailed answered question :(
You should definetly rethink your grading
see -> http://www.experts-exchang
Holger
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by: RavingNunPosted on 2005-01-29 at 01:44:17ID: 13170628
Standard Compliance and maximum transmission rate, both of these varies.