Hubs, Repeaters, Bridges, and Switches
- June 18th, 2010
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To pass your Network+ certification exam, you must know the differences between hubs, repeaters, bridges, and switches. The differences are straightforward for the most part, so let’s examine the basic purpose of these devices.
Hubs and repeaters both work at the Physical layer of the OSI model. They do not help to direct traffic toward the proper destination, as routers and switches do. Their purpose in the network is simply to make the signal strong enough to reach its destination, by regenerating the signal. Hubs and repeaters both take an incoming data signal and make a clean, strong copy of the signal. Otherwise, the signal would suffer from attenuation, the gradual weakening of a signal as it gets farther and farther away from the source.
Repeaters are just about extinct in today’s networks, because they only have one input port and one output port. Naturally, this means we could only regenerate a single data signal. Hubs are really just multiport repeaters, but their multiple ports give them some value in today’s networks. Read more
