Why do they still make hubs?

[busmaster11]

I mean, 4 and 8 port switches have got to be the same price by now, and are more secure, faster, and without any of the chatter...

hmmm?

 

[Nothinman]

Because in some environment you need to be able to sniff all traffic and most small switches aren't managed so you can't span ports.

 

[ITJunkie]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Because in some environment you need to be able to sniff all traffic and most small switches aren't managed so you can't span ports.

That and they are next to nothing in cost and, for most home users, require no setup. Plug and go.

 

[Nothinman]

Unmanaged switches don't require any setup either.

 

[ITJunkie]

True

 

[Nothinman]

Hell, managed switches don't need any setup either unless you want to do fancy things like port security or vlans.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Unmanaged switches provide no security.

I pick up small hubs every once in a while in fear that they'll disappear from the store shelves one day...

 

[amdskip]

Hubs will never go away. My school orders pallets of them for the bookstore. They are pretty much pieces of junk. I wish they would order 4 port switches instead.

 

[Zugzwang152]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Because in some environment you need to be able to sniff all traffic and most small switches aren't managed so you can't span ports.

woudn't a managed switch be able to do this as well. albeit for a far greater cost.

 

[ScottMac]

On a managed switch, you need to specify a specific port you want to "snif." With a hub, you get all the traffic, all the time.

In the case of an NAI Sniffer (and others, I'm sure), it'll give you users by utilization, source/destination addresses, and all traffic sorted by protocol (and other monitoring stats).

Of course, if you put the hub between two switches, all you'll get is the traffic between those two switches, and all the broadcast / multicast traffic in that broadcast domain.

Most managed switces will not allow you to send traffic (for monitoring/"sniffing" from one switch through the network to another switch/port destination. Cisco 6500 can do it, but I'm not aware of any others.

Hubs are still the best solution for smaller many-to-one networks (like most home networks).

FWIW

Scott

 

[busmaster11]

Originally posted by: ScottMac
Hubs are still the best solution for smaller many-to-one networks (like most home networks).

FWIW

Scott

Why is that? I'm well aware that hubs allow traffic to be sniffed, as they basically repeat packets or broadcast them to all downstream nodes, but why is that a concern for home networks? And if this is the case, why do most home routers have built-ion 4 port switches instead of hubs?

 

[yoda291]

Here's what I have always thought about hubs nowadays:

really, a hub is a repeater (layer1 device), and most people use them as such. Hubs are pretty much copper, amplifier, power source.

For instance, if I need to extend a reach of ethernet cabling, a hub > switch because there's no error checking, no store-forward/cut-through wackiness, arp tables, or a cpu necessary. really, all you need is a power source, some copper, and an amplifier -> hub!

You get multiple ports and you can do things like sniff traffic since, in essence, one machine on the hub is passively listening to a link between two other devices and isn't supposed to be generating collisions. Basic Inline sniffers are really just a tight copper coil that wraps around an ethernet cable to "sense" the electricity in the wire through the jacket, an amplifier, and a battery. Once again, copper, amp, power.

As far as home use, I think maybe the argument is that hubs are cheaper than switches? I think those home routers use switches because when you weigh what it probably costs to throw in some switch logic vs the cost of fielding all those support calls from people asking "What do you mean I have to set the NIC to half-duplex", the numbers favor switches....not to mention end user experience in setting up a network out of box.