What's the difference between a Hub, a Switch and a Router?

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It depends on your ISP. If they'll allow you to have more than one IP on your line, then a switch, or even a hub, will do. However it's more likely they'll only give you one IP at a time, so you'll need something like a NAT router in that case.

Good luck!

Leo

hi leo,

ok my situation is different from all of these [I believe, I didn't get to read all of them].. me and my brother own a PS2 each, both of us want to play Final Fantasy XI together, but we only have one connection.. I've been thinking of getting a router and going wireless..[i'll be in my room, while he stays in the living room]..what should we get? what's the best option, and how can i go about setting up my network? [any help is appreciated]

Actually the very simple setup illustrated in http://ask-leo.com/archives/000086.html should do you quite well.

Leo

hello leo, i have a lynks system router and cannot get my computer to communicate with my alesis adat hd-24 I don't know what im doing wrong. i've tried almost everything and its not working. When i use the internet explorer or try to ping it in command it keeps saying that it timed out and wont communicate back and forth with each other. what do i do???????

In looking over the manual for that device, it appears it's 10mb only ... does your router support 10mb? (Linksys probably does, but you should confirm). You're connecting with a normal ethernet cable, yes? Have you configured it's IP address to something that does not conflict with another device? The address you configure should start with 192.168. It looks like that device must be in ftp mode to operate on the ethernet ... I assume you've placed it in ftp mode? I'm not convinced IE or ping would work ... but ftp might ... it looks like this device has very limitted ethernet capability. Is your router connected to the internet, and if so, can your computer connect to the internet through it?

Hi, I have a Cable Internet connection with 2 IPs
I have a 4 port Router connected at the modem, and then out of one port I have it run into a hub which shares with 4 other computers, (the other 2 0f 3 ports are in use directly in another part of dwelling, When I try to bypass the HUB and plug directly into the PC I get nothing, It will only work with the Hub. Now I have unplugged all the other ports and tried running directly from router to PC and still nothing, the only thing thats works is this cheapo HUB I have had for 5 years. Any ideas. The main reason for all this, is the slow speed I get when I test my connection compared to the other PCs connected on the other ports is nite and day.

My *guess* is that it probably has to do with the speed of the hub and network cards. I'll bet that the hub is 10mb fixed speed, and that both the card and the router are auto-sensing 10/100. I have seen some cards get confused when both ends of the connection are autosensing. If you can, configured the network adapter to be 10mb fixed speed and see if that clears it up.

Thanks for your help, I configured it to work as
10Mbps Half duplex and I was able to connect directly to PC, speed didnt improve but atleast that issue is solved. Thanks again.

Hello,

Can you have hubs and switches in your network at the same time, or do you need one or the other?

Thanks!

It's quite possible to intermix them as appropriate. In fact most large networks will have a combination of routers, switches and hubs.

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