How old are you? Hub vs Switch #shorts

#youtubeshorts #switch #hub

[davidbombal]

I'm not really a boomer ... just for the kids that keep calling me one 😂

[msabenda]

Keep on creating short videos like this, it really helpful. Thank you Bombal

[TheNaoki]

Nowadays, everyone calls a layer 2 switch “a switch hub”. I want to buy a layer 1 hub for my experiment, the shop assistant brings a layer 2 switch to me. No one know layer 1 hub at all.

[deang]

Hubs are still very useful for diagnostics because you insert them into a cable, replicate the data out to a different port to which a laptop is connected running Wireshark to capture and analyse the packets.

This enables you to monitor the traffic and debug issues without disrupting the communication between the two devices/applications running.

You can't do that with a switch.

But it is much harder now to purchase hubs.
And it doesn't help when the words hub and switch are interchanged because people don't really understand the difference.

[kneekoo]

We had hubs at work back in 2000. When I told my boss about the difference between a hub and a switch is that all the confidential documents copied through the network actually go to everyone connected to the hub, he freaked out.

That was probably my best sales/upgrade pitch ever. :))

[Mawson]

Would love to see simple explanations like this continuing to go up the TCP/IP layers

[JanPeterson]

Good description, but a couple points... when the switch first turns on, it doesn't know what is attached where (until it gets its MAC address table built up) so it retransmits on all ports until it figures it out. Second point, everything attached to the hub is in the same "collision domain". This means there is a hard limit to how many hubs you can daisy chain together. We used to run into this back in the day where a central hub had multiple hubs hooked to it to give enough ports to wire up all the offices e.g. in a floor. Everything worked great until two people hooked up mini-hubs in two different offices that were on different hubs in the wiring closet. Suddenly things were too far apart and the whole network would fail. That was almost as fun to find as the guy who unhooked the coax from the t-connector (instead of unhooking the t-connector from the computer) to rearrange his office.

[jacobekker]

In high school in the late 90s, a bunch of us used to play multiplayer game in our computer lab. We didn't realize we were were contesting traffic for every school in the district using the same network. We returned after Christmas break one year to learn that the district upgraded the hubs to switches. The teacher used our gaming sessions as a way to demonstrate the benefit of the "smarter" network.

[_m.a-x]

I've had that same exact EN104 HUB for so many years in my sysadmin troubleshooter's tool box. And David knows exactly why :)

[defaultHandle]

Micro Switching, prevents packet collision which requires the packet to be resent. The more traffic the more collision resulting in lower performance. Switches improve performance and throughout when traffic increases, they still perform well.

[Phil_DIDIER]

The Net Gear hub. That device was so convenient because it was small and portable. I think the cables accounted for more space in my bag by the time they were packed up.

[UnanimousDelivers]

I love how concise you made that. If only all my IT training was as straight forward.

[RemizZ]

Not just boomers. If you had one of those hubs, you were the most invited person to any LAN party in the early 2000s lol

[NoEggu]

Another difference is that switches regenerate the signal. So that ~100 meter distance will be doubled, if you use a switch (~100 meters per cable).

Sure, few people have a need for that type of distance. But it is a difference.

If you use a hub, then the hub does not regenerate the signal. If you use a 75 meter cable going in, and a 75 meter going out, then you will have exceeded the design limit of the cables.

Use those exact same cables with a switch, and you will be fine.

[bart_ender]

This was the clearest most concise explanation of the difference between hubs and switches I've ever gotten and I'm taking courses on networking and a+ practice and the Google it certification program.

[mohitawatade]

This is what I want on shorts
Straight to point and accurate 👍

[davidneale]

I'm old enough that I remember going from no network at all to coaxial cable with BNC connectors and T pieces on the back of every card so you could link them all together.

[wfkvr]

There was no mention of collision domains. The reason why sending traffic out of all the ports is bad, is because it causes collisions. A collision is where two networking devices send traffic at the same time and the packets "collide" on the wire. In laymans terms the information gets scrambled as you are trying to send 2 different electrical signals on the same wire. A switch creates multiple collision domains based on the MAC address and sends the traffic only to the port with that MAC.

[Sokanas]

the difference is a hub loves to gossip with the neighbours while the switch is like the postman and only sends parcels to right house.

[kipp]

Content like this is great, short, and to the point. For people learning networking, we often get terms thrown at us that we may not understand, especially with legacy tech. It’s also important to point out that layer 3 switches exist. I wonder why they’re still called switches as opposed to something else, considering they can perform a broader range of functions. And can’t forget programmable switches meant to be used in a software defined network.