ID:277933
Aug 20 2008, 1:47 pm
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 So, if I have a router in the "computer room" and a single wire going through the wall into my room, using this Switch will allow me to hook up that one wire into the switch, and hook up several other wires into various computers around my room, right? http://www.newegg.com/Product/ Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833127085 | |
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Aug 20 2008, 1:50 pm
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Superbike32
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yes, exactly, it is what i use, but i just have too many computers and use it in the same room, but that is how it works.
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As we discussed, yes.
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To elaborate a little, a switch is pretty much a router without all of the routing rules, it takes a signal and passes it along to any system connected to it as long as the system is on the same subnet. It works a lot like a hub, except it's not quite as smart about things, most do auto-speed detection and that's about as advanced as you get.
I currently use a switch to share my dial-up between my two PC's and my Xbox -- works really well. | |
You'll be pretty happy with it, a switch is one of those things you just gotta have if you want to do some simple networking. I know mine gets a lot of use simply because it's easier than setting up a router to handle basic signal sharing.
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You've kind of mangled hubs and switches together. A hub operates at OSI layer 1, and a switch operates at OSI layer 2 (sometimes 3 as well, for business ones).
A hub is essentially a signal repeater that can (doesn't have to) bridge two types of network, such as Token Ring and 802.3 LAN. Link negotiation and collision detection are left entirely to the connected devices, no routing occurs (These are OSI 2's reponsibility). Classically hubs were 2 port only, mainly for signal repeating or medium bridging, but they found use doing signal splitting (a hub will send data to everything except the port is received from) and line sharing, mainly in large networks for sending data to a promiscuous device, essentially a monitor. Hubs can't really be used for proper multiple-point-to-point traffic, if two devices start sending then a collision will occur. As such on a multi-port hub, you can think of it as bandwidth is shared between all devices capable of sending in the worst case, and latency will be line latency * number of devices capable of sending, once again in the worst case. On the whole, hubs are actually "dumber" than switches, and thus less expensive to manufacture. Hubs do get some general use nowadays bridging 802.3 LAN and 802.11 Wireless LAN. You are almost right with the switch. A switch typically doesn't have routing rules, because routing rules concern the network (usually IP) layer. Big corporate switches might, but your off-the-shelf switch won't. Rather confusingly, a switch does route, it doesn't duplicate. It's routing process occurs via the MAC addressing system. One of the rather important distinctions between a switch and a router is a matter of transparency at OSI 3. Because a switch doesn't write to OSI 2, it will not appear as a 'hop' in tools such as netstat. Switches are point-to-point, they take data off OSI 1, chunks that data into frames, looks at the destination MAC address or a given packet and compares this with it's MAC routing cache, then sends it down the appropriate port (with OSI 1 converting it to the appropriate medium and doing the actual sending), or reports an error to the port it sent down (with the same OSI 1 business going on). A router is responsible for the wider scale routing. It will re-write frames received from OSI 2 according to OSI 3 destination, as such leaving it's own MAC address on the breadcrumb trail, to be picked up by tools such as netstat. Then it will hand off to OSI 2 for performing the next hop. Routers (and OSI 3 in general) need an awareness of the lower OSI layers in order to operate. They will need access to the OSI 2 MAC cache to perform the packet re-write, and in the case of IP, will need to be aware of the maximum payload of OSI 1 for the next hop, so it can fragment a packet into appropriately sized frames, for OSI 2 to send one at a time. Because OSI 3 works with packets for routing, it'll happily sit and hold several frames in it's buffers, until these make up a full packet to be inspected. IP addresses are typically also re-written by routers (NAT addressing), meaning OSI 3 will also get re-written, essentially permitting the connection of logical subnets (your internal LAN and the internet). Non-routing hard firewalls also operate at OSI 3. Intrusion Detection Systems typically operate at OSI 4 (TCP/UDP) as well as OSI 3. I hope that clears things up a bit. | |
