Hubs Vs Switches

HUBS VS SWITCHES

Hubs and the switches both accomplishes more or less the same thing . Both can be used to regenerate the signal (repeater), and both can be used to divide the signal into multiple (for ur personal home network ), but they differ in the way they function.

Hubs functon at the Physical layer and the switches actually function at the data link layer .

when a hub receives a data it is transmitted to all its ports, which results in bandwidth wastage and also it results in more collisions .now also hub works in haf duplex i.e. To say data can flow in one direction at a time . So suppose u have a 10 terminal network and have 100 kbps net connection , so each terminal will get maximum bandwidth of only 10kbps speed . This also means a lot of bandwith wastage.

In case of switches , they work at data link layer. They reduce all the problem of hubs like- collisions . Switches dont broadcast the data and data is only routed to a particular system in the network . So if the collision occurs when data is transmitted b/w two computers there is only one collision domain,i.e. Switches use microsegmentation, as opposed to hubs in which collision can occur b/w any two computers due to broadcasting(thus also slowing down the speed)

Switches always keep track of the address of computer belonging to a particular port. That means data for comp A will only be sent to comp A(as opposed to broadcasting) . So for above example each of the terminal can get a maximum of 100kbps speed .