What does a gigabit switch do?

[rednal]

I know next to nothing when it comes to networking and wondering what a gigabit switch did. I'm on a wireless connection and would like to know if this would increase my connection speed, decrease my ping, etc? If you can please explain so its the easiest to understand. Thanks in advance!
Rednal


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Irrelevant link was removed.

-Jack
Moderator

 

[imagoon]

On the really basic level it is the "splitter" for the network. All the cables go to it that allow all the computers to "talk to each other."

Slightly more technical: It connects and passes messages from multiple network devices to others via MAC address lookup tables.

As for "increase my connection speedm decrease my ping" that falls in to a solid "maybe." Cabled devices tend to be more consistent that wireless and at this time cable is faster than wireless but that might not mean anything if you are purely looking for internet and your connection speed is limited in the first place.

You link does not go to a switch.

 

[Smoblikat]

Plainly a switch takes one or more network connections and allows them to talk to other things connected to it.

Internally your speed will be much faster, but getting to the internet may or may not be faster, due to router bottlenecks or limited U/D speeds.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Unless you are in an area where you can get over 100mbps connection (ex: FIOS, Google fiber) a Gigabit switch will not increase your internet speed. However it will increase your LAN speed so transferring files between computers, etc. With how cheap Gigabit is now days there's not really any reason not to go gigabit at home. Though when you are looking at managed switches then there's a bigger difference but chances are you don't need that. 😉

 

[sixoptics.com]

In computer networking, an Ethernet switch connects multiple devices, such as computers, servers, or game systems, to a Local Area Network (LAN). Small business and home offices often use such a switch to allow more than one device to share a broadband Internet connection. A gigabit switch operates in the same manner, only at data rates much greater than standard or Fast Ethernet. People can use these switches to quickly transfer data between devices in a network, or to download from the Internet at very high speeds.
Broadband Internet connections to streaming audio and video have increased the demand for faster and more stable transmissions. Gigabit Ethernet transmits at approximately one gigabit per second. That is at speeds nearly 100 times those of Fast Ethernet, which transfers data at approximately 10 megabits per second. The gigabit switch is designed to work at these increased speeds, without signal loss or transfer rate reduction.
Hope this is helpful!

 

[lif_andi]

That is at speeds nearly 100 times those of Fast Ethernet, which transfers data at approximately 10 megabits per second. The gigabit switch is designed to work at these increased speeds, without signal loss or transfer rate reduction.
Hope this is helpful!

You sure it's not: Ethernet - 10Mbps, Fast Ethernet - 100Mbps and Gigabit - 1Gbps?

Gigabit is "only" 10 times faster than Fast Ethernet if I'm not mistaken.

 

[imagoon]

You sure it's not: Ethernet - 10Mbps, Fast Ethernet - 100Mbps and Gigabit - 1Gbps?

Gigabit is "only" 10 times faster than Fast Ethernet if I'm not mistaken.

You are correct:

Ethernet - 10Mbps
Fast Ethernet - 100Mbps
Gigabit - 1000Mbps
10gig - 10000Mbps
40gig - 40000Mbps

So only 10x faster.