Subneting

DVardysShadow

tomsolomon wrote: »

So a router would negate the need for switches and hubs could be used in their place?

No. What you think of as a router is in fact a router with a hub on the back. It is the hub on the back of the router which might negate the need for a switch. But if you have 30 machines to think about, you need switches not hubs. Hubs don't know which machine is on which connection, so everything is echoed everywhere. But a switch knows which machine is on which port and only sends to the correct port. [It only knows the machines by MAC address, not by IP address.]

TimothyEBaldwin

DVardysShadow wrote: »

No. What you think of as a router is in fact a router with a hub on the back.

No, it's actually a switch that is included with home routers.

Another common mistake is to assume routers by definition perform NAT and firewalling.

DVardysShadow

TimothyEBaldwin wrote: »

No, it's actually a switch that is included with home routers.

Another common mistake is to assume routers by definition perform NAT and firewalling.

Hmm. I have never been convinced that it is a switch rather than a hub - there are so many home routers out there and you would need to examine each one in order to generalise, that I tend to think of them as hubs.

I agree about NAT and firewalling. DHCP and time server also come into the same bracket of extra functions which are not central to a router.