I need a hub so I can plug my living room PC and XBOX 360 in on my network because they dont seem to be working that great on wireless. Im looking for something that I can use as a hub so that they appear on the same network rather than NAT getting in the way of things. I would also like it to be a gigbit one. Any suggestions? I dont mind if its a router that I just have to turn the NAT and DHCP features of on.
Using a router as a hub
- Thread starter Huugs
- Start date
Huugs said:
A switch just switches traffic. Builds a list of what mac address is connected to which switch port and sends traffic down that particular port depending on what mac it's destined for. Allows for full-duplex operation, and also allows for lots of different speeds to plugged into the same switch without it dragging everything else down. It's a layer 2 device (google for OSI model if you don't know this) which means it works on the data-link layer. It doesn't care about ip addresses or anything, it just cares about mac addresses.
A router routes. Works on the next level up (layer 3 - network layer). Given a packet headed for an ip address, it figures out where that packet should go.
Network segments are hooked together using routers and allow more machines to connect to them with switches.
Cheers.
Im looking at a 5 port Netgear one then. Am I right in thinking that there isnt one external port and 4 internal ones like with a router and that you can just put any of the cables in any of the ports? Forgive me if its a silly question but Im only just getting into networking a bit more and never really looked into it before.
Paul
Im looking at a 5 port Netgear one then. Am I right in thinking that there isnt one external port and 4 internal ones like with a router and that you can just put any of the cables in any of the ports? Forgive me if its a silly question but Im only just getting into networking a bit more and never really looked into it before.
Paul