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Do I really need a router?
- Thread starter Medellon
- Start date
titanmiller
Platinum Member
You really dont even need a hub for 2 systems. But to answer your question there would be little to no advantage of getting a switch over a hub for a small network.
Lord Evermore
Diamond Member
See your other thread, CZroe. A switch may not help at all in your case, because the traffic is still passing to the cable headend, resulting in your slow PC to PC transfers.
In this case, a switch could be very useful, depending on some things. By connecting the two machines to a hub, the shared connection is resulting in reduced performance of your cable service. A hub broadcasts all traffic to all ports. If you have ICS running on one machine, and the second machine using the first machine as a gateway, then when machine B sends traffic to the net, it goes to the hub and is broadcast to all ports, including to the cable modem. Machine A then resends the data using the ICS gateway, broadcasting to all the ports again, including the cable modem which is where it's intended. When the return traffic comes in, the cable modem broadcasts to all ports. Machine A then uses ICS to resend the traffic to machine B which is the final destination.
Now, the speed of the hub is such that there's no chance of flooding out the internal network, but all that traffic that's being duplicated gets sent out from the cable modem over the cable connection to the headend router, which then has to process it and discard any of the traffic that isn't intended for it (the traffic between machine A and machine B). For web browsing or other small bits of traffic, this isn't noticeable. But if you're streaming data, then you're ending up with the data being sent over your connection twice, resulting in half your bandwidth being usable.
If machine B is uploading a file, it starts sending at 10Mbps for example. Machine A receives it, and starts sending that as well. Now both machines may start causing collisions in the hub, which isn't too bad since the cable connection is slow enough that the delays of collisions aren't important. But, the cable modem is also receiving the traffic from both machines at 10Mbps, and has to send both sets of traffic to the headend, where half of it is discarded.
If you're downloading a file, it's slightly different but no less of an issue. The incoming traffic from the cable modem is broadcast to both machines, and when machine A resends it to machine B via ICS, the cable modem essentially receives a duplicate of all the incoming traffic. If you have a 1.5Mbps download speed, then machine A is resending 1.5Mbps of data to machine B, and the cable modem is also being told to send 1.5Mbps of traffic upstream to the headend router. Most cable services are capped at 384Kbps or lower, so you end up flooding out your upload bandwidth with unneeded traffic.
And of course, if both machines are trying to upload or download something, you start tripling the amount of traffic the cable modem is being told to send (1 from machine B, 2 from machine A resending machine B's data and its own). This means the headend router discards only one-third of the total traffic, but now each machine is only receiving one-third of the bandwidth rather than half.
Now, I believe that some cable modems are able to proactively discard traffic that isn't intended for the headend router, so that it doesn't end up broadcasting double data, but I'm not sure of this. It would require the modem essentially having the same capabilities of a switch or bridge, which is all a cable modem really is. Even if it is able to do this though, it is more efficient to not have to make it do that, and avoiding it could just make the connection more responsive.
If you're able to upload and download from both machines at or near your rated bandwidth caps, then don't worry too much about it.
In this case, a switch could be very useful, depending on some things. By connecting the two machines to a hub, the shared connection is resulting in reduced performance of your cable service. A hub broadcasts all traffic to all ports. If you have ICS running on one machine, and the second machine using the first machine as a gateway, then when machine B sends traffic to the net, it goes to the hub and is broadcast to all ports, including to the cable modem. Machine A then resends the data using the ICS gateway, broadcasting to all the ports again, including the cable modem which is where it's intended. When the return traffic comes in, the cable modem broadcasts to all ports. Machine A then uses ICS to resend the traffic to machine B which is the final destination.
Now, the speed of the hub is such that there's no chance of flooding out the internal network, but all that traffic that's being duplicated gets sent out from the cable modem over the cable connection to the headend router, which then has to process it and discard any of the traffic that isn't intended for it (the traffic between machine A and machine B). For web browsing or other small bits of traffic, this isn't noticeable. But if you're streaming data, then you're ending up with the data being sent over your connection twice, resulting in half your bandwidth being usable.
If machine B is uploading a file, it starts sending at 10Mbps for example. Machine A receives it, and starts sending that as well. Now both machines may start causing collisions in the hub, which isn't too bad since the cable connection is slow enough that the delays of collisions aren't important. But, the cable modem is also receiving the traffic from both machines at 10Mbps, and has to send both sets of traffic to the headend, where half of it is discarded.
If you're downloading a file, it's slightly different but no less of an issue. The incoming traffic from the cable modem is broadcast to both machines, and when machine A resends it to machine B via ICS, the cable modem essentially receives a duplicate of all the incoming traffic. If you have a 1.5Mbps download speed, then machine A is resending 1.5Mbps of data to machine B, and the cable modem is also being told to send 1.5Mbps of traffic upstream to the headend router. Most cable services are capped at 384Kbps or lower, so you end up flooding out your upload bandwidth with unneeded traffic.
And of course, if both machines are trying to upload or download something, you start tripling the amount of traffic the cable modem is being told to send (1 from machine B, 2 from machine A resending machine B's data and its own). This means the headend router discards only one-third of the total traffic, but now each machine is only receiving one-third of the bandwidth rather than half.
Now, I believe that some cable modems are able to proactively discard traffic that isn't intended for the headend router, so that it doesn't end up broadcasting double data, but I'm not sure of this. It would require the modem essentially having the same capabilities of a switch or bridge, which is all a cable modem really is. Even if it is able to do this though, it is more efficient to not have to make it do that, and avoiding it could just make the connection more responsive.
If you're able to upload and download from both machines at or near your rated bandwidth caps, then don't worry too much about it.
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