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View Full Version : hubs and routers and switches oh my!


hunter00
12-29-01, 10:43 AM
actually this has nothing to do with routers, but i liked the catchy title:D

okay . . . soooooooo . . . i want to start having lan parties at my place (the ones i go to are like an hour away for me and a bunch of other people) so i need to know exactly what to get to set it up. the ones i go to use switches but i dont even know what that means. (i've never been involved in the networking part(the lan part), i just go to play(the party part). I can get a really cheap D-link DE-824TP Ethernet 24-port Hub (24 RJ-45, 1 BNC & 1 AUI) [http://www.dlink.com/../../products/hubs/de824tp/] or at least i think i can get it cheap, i will know for sure in like 8 hours. anyway, is this good for lan gaming/leeching? or should i get these switch thingies (are they cheap?) also, a hub can't share an internet connection can it? is there anything i could hook up with it to share my cable modem (obviously not 24 at a time, but if one person needs internet to dl a driver or something, ya know) can switches? also i know you need to set up ips and stuff, is that networking stuff hard to do with a hub? switches? thanks (obviously i know very little about networking, although i do have a router set up in my house . . .)

Maddman
12-29-01, 12:39 PM
A switch can support faster speeds because it actually routes data to the computer where it is going. A hub recieves data and then rebroadcastes the data to all computers and lets the computer that needs it decide. The best way to share a dsl connection is a router.

hunter00
12-29-01, 04:30 PM
thanks for the help, but i still had a lot of unanswered questions. i have a 4-port router for my cable, but i am talking aboiut like 12-24 ports here. all the switches i see are 8 port. can you connect them? can you connect hubs? can inter-connect hubs, routers,switches?

hunter00
12-29-01, 04:35 PM
also, how much more is a switch worth? (like 2x, 3x)

Maddman
12-29-01, 07:02 PM
most hubs connect at 10mbs. Most Switches connect at 100mbs and will auto configure for what is connected to them. most hubs and switches have an uplink port on them. you can run cat5 patch cable from a port on the router to the uplink port on the hub/switch or from a port on the hub/switch to an uplink port on another hub/switch.