Router "with 10/100Mbps" switch?

[Com807877]

Hi all,

I have been looking at routers and I notice some are advertised as a router "with 10/100Mbps switch". Is there any difference between a router advertised as just a router and one "with switch"? If so, what is the difference?

Thanks for any info!

 

[sep]

If the router specs show 10/100 ports then your 99.9% guaranteed it's a switch. Back in the day these could of been hubs. In general terms, hubs send traffice to all ports looking for the destination vs the switch knows the destination.

 

[Goosemaster]

A swicth is generally a layer 2 device that allows filesharing between computers.

A router is a layer3 device that allows the routing of information.

For your internet connection, there is no question that you will need a router if you will be using multiple computers to access the internet. The router will take your one internet address and spilt it up into as many as you need (less than 254). That said, many rotuers only have one port.
Think of it as a vine. The router should have other smaller vines behind it, and for that, you need to connect a switch. The included switch solves this problem for you so all you have to do is follow the instructions. The switch is internally conencted to the router, so instead of having to buy more equipment, you instantly have 4 ports that can ascess the internet through the router, and can share files with each other.


Basically, it's nice to have.

 

[Goosemaster]

Here is a link to an old network I used to ahve as a kid. http://geocities.com/goosemaster2k2/Network_Page/index.htm

In this example, the SMC router has a 4 port switch. ALl of theose computers are connected by cat5 ethernet cable and can acess teh internet.