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[Ernesto Celis <celise AT prodigy.net.mx>]

> Ahh, I didn't realise that's all a router was. I thought
> the router was a seperate piece of equipment that all the
> cable connected to. I was always confused between the
> descriptions of router/hub/switches.

The diferences are very simple, a router manage the traffic
beetwen  networks using logical addresing (the IP addres),
we can thought in routers like the backbone of internet (and
they are). The switches are used to segment LAN's and they
manage the traffic wnithin the LAN using physical addresing
(the MAC-address, each network card has his own MAC-addres),
and a hub only gives you conectivity beetwen computers and
if you have an Internet conection the hub shares the
bandwidth available to all the computers, this device no
manage traffic and collisions are very common in networks
using hubs.

It was a very, very basic description, my intention was not
give you a networking class, I am not an expert in
networking :)

Ernesto

Usuario Linux #323140
celiseREMOVETHIS AT prodigy.net.mx