[RESOLVED] Hub vs. Switch

I am currently in the process of organizing a T1 installation next week. Right now, we have 18 devices on the lan via 3 10/100 8 port hubs. Is it overkill to install a switch off the VINA box and then run the hubs off of it. Or does it make more sense to re-run the cable to the hub or switch directly connected to the VINA box? I forsee our network growing to around 30+ devices in the next yr to 18 months.

Im not quite sure what you are asking? Are you sugesting putting the Vina voice/data box on to a switch and then running the 3 hubs each into a port on the switch. If so that is only going to depend on if its and inteligent switch that has the capabilits of building a switching table for each port. then it woudl segement each of the 8 ports of the hubs to one port. If its not an inteligent switch it will simply be like you dont even have a switch there is will still just send all the trafic around. My suggestion is to upgrade all hubs to switches. You can buy 2 24 port switches and then resolve your issue this will also greatly speed up network. Or buy one managable switch that has the capability of being upgraded so you can add ports as need. X

[This message has been edited by x_789 (edited January 30, 2001).]

I agree with this.

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by x_789:
Im not quite sure what you are asking? Are you sugesting putting the Vina voice/data box on to a switch and then running the 3 hubs each into a port on the switch. If so that is only going to depend on if its and inteligent switch that has the capabilits of building a switching table for each port. then it woudl segement each of the 8 ports of the hubs to one port. If its not an inteligent switch it will simply be like you dont even have a switch there is will still just send all the trafic around. My suggestion is to upgrade all hubs to switches. You can buy 2 24 port switches and then resolve your issue this will also greatly speed up network. Or buy one managable switch that has the capability of being upgraded so you can add ports as need. X </font>

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No matter what,
No matter where,
If broadband connection is there,
It's always HOME.

I would go with switches, you can even get unmanaged ones if you're not plannig to grow to more than 30 (if you will - better get the managed ones that you can create V-Lans in the future)

Pros: (for a network of less than 50 Computers)

100Mbit Full duplex, No more collisons.

if you get a managed one :

Remote management of Ports (error viewing, connect/disconnect) Grouping (VLAN ?) etc...

I wouldn't use one switch and than connect the rest of the computers to hubs... that kinda beats the purpose.

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Computers do exactly as you tell them - not what you want them to do ...

Just use switches. Managed ones if you can afford it. If you do no get a managed Switch you can still use a hub to detect errors.

A switch is like having a bridge on each port. With a hub, you can plug in a sniffer and get packets from all ports. It is a shared backbone. You cannot do this with a switch. To test a port, just plug a hub into that port, plug the computer and sniffer into the hub. Now you can see all the packets.

A layer 2 switch breaks up your network traffic into separate collision domains. It does not help with broadcast domains. A layer 3 switch which works at the network layer of the OSI model can do both.

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Born to Network

with 24 users it's acceptable to run the hubs off the switch and have 3 collision domains. i doubt your users will saturate this network but if you find any slowdown or if your users transfer large files, drop a sniffer on the network before and after you put the switch in and look at your utilization and collisions. it'd be a good idea to establish a baseline on your network utilization..

remember that when your on a 100Mb hub, the highest throughput your going to get is about 30-40 Mb/s for the entire collision domain but when your on a switch you can get 100Mb/s for each point to point connection. for example, if you have 10 machines and each user is connected to only one other user for a single instance, you can get 500Mb/s throughput on that switch while running in half duplex and 1Gb/s throughput in full duplex mode.

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=-iateyourcat-=