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Difference between a router and a switch

M

Muerto

Golden Member
I want to upgrade my LAN from a 10Mbit hub to a router or a switch but I don't know which to buy. We have three computers in our house and we're on cable.

What's the difference between the two and which do you think would be best for me? I'm not trying to do anything fancy here, just share internet access and host the occasional LAN party. I think I'll either buy Linksys or D-Link. Thanks. 🙂
 
get a linksys router. it allows all your computers to share 1 internet connection. the 4 port linksys has a switch built in. the switch simply allows the computers to talk to each other.

hurry and buy the linksys.. it's going for $50 at staples. check the hotdeals forum for more info.
 
What type of internet connection do you have, how do you connect to the net? How is your setup right now?

A router is a device to connect two different networks together, nothing more.

A switch is a smart hub, you send a packet to the switch and the switch sends it to the computer that owns the packet. A hub is a little different, you send a packet to the hub and the hub just sends it to every computer on the network.

All depends on your internet connection what you should get. I think you can get a router with a built in 5 port hub or something, not sure though.
 
actually a switch is a hub that can allow both computers running on 10baset and 100 baset to communicate at each other at full speed, instead of throttling down the 100baset computers to 10 if there was a 10 on a hub. a router, is actually computer that routes packets to computers on the network. I have the linksys router at home, and its actually a linux based machine that routes packets. It also assigns IPs with dhcp to up to 253 computers and can do some port forwarding and firewall stuff. just like a router that you could build with a regular computer and win2k advanced server (which one of my friends has done).
 
with your setup i would suggest the Netgear RT314 to share the internet and connect the PCs to make a home LAN...the 4 ports on this router are actually a switch so you will have the best connections on the LAN side (home PCs)...plenty of hot deals on the NG router too...
 
a hub is just a repeater, all packets are sent to all ports, smart switch actually uses addresses for each port so it knows where to send the data (it doesnt have to repeat the data out to every port), but for small setups a switch can be overkill, unless you do a lot of downloading.
 
And my two cents,

I router switches at the IP level, while a switch switches at the MAC level.

Get the Linksys router. I don't know what's inside that thing, I just know that it will do what you want and is cheap.

Alternative, run w2k on on of the computers and put two NICs in that computer, using the w2k conmputer as a router. Get a cheap hub and connect all the computers and the second w2k NIC together.

jeremy806
 
OK, Here it is

Switch is Like a hub, Except it learns Physical Nic Addresses (not IP)and does filter what messages go to what ports. Hubs also allow 10BT to connect to 100BT at depending on the speed of the NIC. ie, 10b gets a 10 connection, 100 gets a 100 connection
It creates seperate collision domains, but they all share broadcast domains

Router Can Provide connectivity between different protocols. It can be used to setup a private lan with only 1 live IP address. It routes packets based on IP Address.
It Creates seperate collision and Broadcast Domains.
 
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