Switches and Hubs

[Aragorn]

I need to get a new swithc\hub. What I really need to know is if I need a switch or not. I do some minor gaming i.e. Unreal tournament, Starcraft with just my wife and I. Occasionally I do throw a lan party with about 8 people. I want to keep the cost down as much as possible (of course) so I would like to get a hub and maybe get a few more ports for the same price as a switch. So I thought I would throw out the question and see what you all think.

Thanks

 

[Elledan]

If you often have more than two PC's connected and there's a lot of traffic, get a switch. Using a hub during a LAN party with 4+ PC's leads to a lot of collisions, meaning lots of lag.

 

[shurato]

I say get the switch... you'll only need to pay a little bit more these days. 8 People Lans? Definitly get a switch. But then again 8 port switches might be out of your price range. Playing games like starcraft im guessing you probably wont notice a performance difference as compared to fps games like unreal and etc.

 

[Agamar]

Give me a break here people.. Do any of you run wide scale Lans??? Geez. Just tell him straight. If you have the money, buy the switch, if now, save a load and get the hub. The speed difference won't be noticeable until you are copying 100+M of data across to the other machines anyway.

I personally have a netgear 4 port hub for my home, with 3 machines (2 personal, 1 file server) and a DSL line. Works great for me. Real thruput is only about 35M/s, but that isn't too bad for $30. Not to mention it is really small.

 

[J3S73R]

Agamar is right, If you are not going to be doing/allowing major file transfers during the lan, then you are fine. But as soon as the file transfers start you will notice the difference.