Question about hubs

[F4]

Okay, as I was tought Hubs in school, and also from the indication everyone on here has told me, hubs really only work on the physical layer of the OSI model.

If this is corret, why do some hubs not work with certain models of mac's? I work in a computer store, and the apple rep came by, and told us that they tested diferent hubs with different Macs, and found that the only one that worked with every single Mac out there was a specific model of "Freindlynet" hubs.

But I was taught that hubs only work on the physical layer, which to me would mean that the hub doesn't care about what's really on the end of a cable.


Anybody have any clue why this would be the case?

 

[TimDgsr]

doesn't make sense to me. hubs are a physical layer only device(not including intelligent hubs) that just reproduce a signal and broadcasts it out.

 

[su root]

Trying to make a sale?

A hub is essentially electrical pathways. Back in the old days, there were "Passive Hubs", they worked without power. The powered ones simply read an incomming bit, clean up the signal, amplify it, and broadcast it to everyone else on the hub. No MAC addresses or IPs involved.

I would really like to see a hub and a MAC refuse to work with eachother. I would get a laugh and it would make my day.

The idea of the OSI model is such that each level has a specific function, the functions are standardized, and don't mix with eachother. It doesn't matter what computer your on or the OS that your running, the functions are all still the same. The idea is that if everything is built to OSI compatability, then anything will work with everything. Layer 1's job is to provide the physical means of connecting them. It deals with media types and electricity, not "what type of computer are you running?"

 

[JasonKosi]

The guy was blowing smoke up your rear. Call him on it and cite exactly what you said.

There were a batch of Linksys SWITCHES (and Linksys routers with built-in switches) that seemed to not like a certain a DEC chipset (a very popular one used in some revision D2 NetGear FA-310TX PCI Ethernet cards as well as a few generations of Macs).

 

[zachj]

Is not a hub simply a more advanced means of splicing a single network connection into multiple connections? I don't see how a Mac would even "know" it was on a hub. The incompatibility might have been with a SWITCH on the other end of the hub . . . But not likely with the hub itself. Or perhaps all their hubs were broken.

Z

 

[su root]

Any network equipment at all should work with anything that is built to correct specs.. That includes hubs, switches (layers 2 and 3), routers (layers 3 and 4). The entire data transfer over the network should be transparent to the OS... they send it, and it's gone, then the reciever gets it.