Q!

All,

As i know what is the repeater on the networks?but i doubt of the functionality of the hubs and switch in one "LAN" .Please clear my doubt. I have gone through some books but it gives me a complicated explanation. Some help will be great. Thanks!

The main difference between the two, for a 4 computer network labeled A thru D. computer A sends data to the hub, computers B, C and D will recieve said data, but only the destination computer can accept. Now a switch will transmit data from computer A only to the specific reciever!

As in everything else, it more involved so give google a try!

A switch uses the MAC address to directly route the packets to the destination computer. A hub broadcasts the data sent to all other hosts. This causes a greater percentage of collisions (when to computers send information at the same time).

the MAC address is the network cards built in address and is unique for every nic made

routers are like switches but use the ip protocol to route traffic to the next hop and do not worry about a direct end to end connection

hope that is helpful please correct me if I am mistaken

it's not a very good analogy, switches are routers.

also, an important thing you should always remember about hubs:
their ports are usually 10M half-duplex, unlike switches that do auto-negotiation to decide on the best speed and duplex for the station.

there are hubs that do auto-negotion, but they cost like a switch.
let's just say i've never seen any, because there is no reason to buy them.

"it's not a very good analogy, switches are routers"

Switches are not routers. Routers route by IP address and reside on the "data link" OSI layer. Switches route by MAC address and reside on the "network" OSI layer.

Now some of todays fancy switches can operate on both the network and data link layers, and some routers can operate on both layers as well. These are the exception though, and not the rule.