router or switch?
 

Is there a differance between a router and a switch?

Coz my mate wants to start a connection between 2 maybe more PCs and hes getting a switch but I seem to remember theres a differance between a router and a swtich

He wants it to share the same usb modem and possible lan gaming

Thanks
{Dont say wrong forum i just posted here for a quick answer coz he wants to order it 2nite}

Re: router or switch?
 

Forget a router or switch, get a Digital Data Digester 10/100 from Dufftech Inc. Its much much better.

Re: router or switch?
 

Whats so speacil/differant bout it?

Re: router or switch?
 

short version: routers are better than switches, and for what he wants, im not even sure if you could do it all on a swith, whereas you definatly can on a router (i know this as i am sitting behind one that controls my home network right now)

Re: router or switch?
 

Ack.

I hate this hardware conversations.

Re: router or switch?
 

We have a 5 port belkin network switch and does all of that fine.

The cable modem is plugged into one of the computers tho via usb and everyone connects to internet via internet connection sharing on that computer. (not sure if moden could plug straight into switch or not but as the computer is on all the time it isn't an issue)

Re: router or switch?
 

A router connects networks to the internet, true routers do not connect PC's.

So you need the switch.

However some routers do have built in modems and switches, then it would work.

Re: router or switch?
 

but if you have a swith, and the main computer is off, the rest cant connect to the net, surely this would be a bit daft??
therefore, a router would be a better idea, i mean, our router was cheap, yet it does the job we need it to do, but there again, we have a hub as well :( so i dont know if my argument just became invalid for me not thinking about that in the first place.

Re: router or switch?
 

yeah thats true, a router prevents the need to have one computer on all the time to connect to the internet.

So if you get a router with a built in cable or adsl modem, and a switch it would work.

Re: router or switch?
 

I've heard a router (well, at least the one we "normal" people tend to buy) is just a switch with the built-in "ability" to share an internet connection for the whole network... No?

You can basically do it all with just a switch (but then the internet/modem-computer would need to be online, as stated above), but I agree with roardrunner, IMO routers are better ([/shortanswer]).

Re: router or switch?
 

A router isn't necessarily a switch as far as I was aware.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hard..._20716946.html has some explanations of differences, they're fairly subtle.

Re: router or switch?
 

omfg

Re: router or switch?
 

Enlighten us MT.

Re: router or switch?
 

I think he should buy a switch.

Using a router for connecting 2 machines together and for lan-gaming is rather silly, and expensive. Routers are used for connecting networks together, and not for connecting a few pc's together in a lan.

If there should be any problems with keeping the machine with the usb-modem powered on at all time, then either get a modem in addition to the switch, or connect the usb-modem to the other machine when it's necessary.

Re: router or switch?
 

You surely can't just plug a modem into the switch, hence the purchase of 'a router'.

Re: router or switch?
 

Nope, i were just thinking about plugging the modem into one of the pc's :)

Re: router or switch?
 

Oh, heh

Re: router or switch?
 

Oh the confusion...

OK, lets try and sort this out a bit.
To try and make it clearer, I'll tell you how the setup in my house works.
In the corner in the study is a PC with no monitor mouse or keyboard, running linux, acting as a router amongst other things. The misconception that a router is a box with flashing lights is a common one. When you use Internet Connection Sharing in Windows, the machine with the internet connection then becomes a router. The difference is that the flashing box does it in hardware, whilst linux/windows/any other OS does it in software.
Anyway, in that PC in the corner are two network cards. The network cable from the cable modem goes into one, and the cable from the first switch goes in the other.
On the other end of that cable is an 8 port switch, which in turn has another cable running to a 5 port switch (you can "cascade" switches and hubs like that). All the other ports go to PCs except for a couple of spare ones.

If I wanted, I could replace the PC in the corner with a hardware router and eliminate one of the switches (because you tend to get 4 or 5 ports on "broadband routers" generally), but without going into specifics the PC runs various other network services and servers.

The setup I have requires that one PC (the one in the corner) is on 24/7. A hardware router would eliminate this requirement if you're bothered about it.
I would NOT recommend using Windows ICS to route your lan <-> internet traffic, simply because you'll be using the windows machine for other things which makes it inherrantly unreliable. The PC I use as a router is dedicated to network tasks only - the only access to it is via a remote console, and you can't do anything much on it anyway because it's pretty stripped down. This makes sure that it will always be doing it's job, and not (for example) crashing half-way through a game of UT2k3. It has not been restarted for just under two months, and can pretty much be forgotton about in terms of maintainence.

If you're really bothered about the differences, this might help you out:

In simple terms, a router is a peice of equipment that will direct traffic from one network to another. For home use, you want to direct traffic from your internal LAN to the Internet. There are differences between home routers and "backbone" internet routers, starting with the fact that home routers use NAT etc, which aren't worth getting into here.
A router does NOT have to connect multiple machines. It requires only two connections (any less and there's nothing to route).

Now for hubs and switches.
First of all, a hub is not the same as a switch. There is a reason switches are significantly more expensive than hubs when you look at models with the same number of ports.
Hubs are dumb. When you send data to a hub, it rebroadcasts it to every port on the hub except the originating one. This means an awful lot of useless traffic is generated, and the more ports on the hub the more useless traffic there is.
This is a problem because hubs don't employ any sort of collision detection either. For starters this means the connection can only operate in half-duplex mode (data can only be sent up or down the line, not both ways at once) because the PCs are having to do the collision detecting. Then when a collision does occur the transmission has to be renegotiated. On top of that, on an 8 port hub in active use there is one hell of a lot of useless data being generated which leads to one hell of a lot of collisions.
In addition to all this, because of the lack of any collision prevention, hubs require the computers connected to "share" the bandwitdh. Got 10 PCs on 100MBit/s cables? Tough - they're only going to do 10Mbit/s if they're all in heavy use.
Switches, on the other hand, are smart.
Switches maintain records of what computers are connected to them and what thier IP addresses are, and can be thought of as making temporary direct crossover connections to computers rather than spewing data everywhere and just hoping it works. Data is only sent to the port on the switch for which it is intended, not to every single one. This allows the connection to operate in full-duplex mode (on 100Mbit/s cables, this means 100Mbit/s BOTH WAYS, so 200Mbit/s total throughput) as the switch is preventing collisions, so data can be sent up and down the line at the same time.
Switches do not require any "sharing" of bandwidth. 10 PCs on 100Mbit/s cables results in 2000Mbit/s (full-duplex remember?) of theoretical total throughput although this is unlikely because a scenario where it can happen is unlikely. Pretty much the only way would be if, say, the 10 computers were paired up, and each PC in each pair was uploading a file to and downloading a file from the other PC in the pair.

What you would buy in the shop as a "broadband router" would be a peice of equipment that is a router and a switch combined - the switch part handles the multiple local LAN ports and the router handles traffic translation between the LAN and the internet.

Re: router or switch?
 

There's a few questions i think should have been asked(or i should have asked). What kind of internet connection does your m8 have. And how often is he going to share the internet connection. Is he only going to share it like a few hours a day like when friends come to visit him, or does he have to share it ca. 24 hours each day.

Personally, of all the replies here(including mine ofcause), i think meglmaniac's reply is the only one that explains the difference between a router and a switch, except that a normal switch makes it decisions based on mac-addresses, not ip addresses.

Re: router or switch?
 

Re: router or switch?
 

I know, but I didn't want to have to get into explaining what a mac address is.

:)

Re: router or switch?
 

I had this question for a while...:
I have a switch (not a router), connected to two pc's and a cable modem. I had to buy a second IP adress from my ISP to have both computers connected at the same time. Would a router instead of a switch have solved that problem?

Re: router or switch?
 

Possibly, I don't really know much about network and internet hardware, but the ISP assigns an IP# to the router, then the router assigns a different IP# to each computer connected to the router.

I think.... i could also be talking out of my arse.

Re: router or switch?
 

Yes. But it's not a "problem", it's how things are SUPPOSED to work damnit.

Re: router or switch?
 

This thread is a source of much amusement.

Re: router or switch?
 

You must be a blast at parties.

Re: router or switch?
 

I know man, I just didnt know how to express myself