Is switch faster than hub?

Hi All,

I maintain a 100 Base-T, Red Hat 8 Samba server with 9
Windows clients. The Windows clients ONLY exchange data
and print jobs with the Samba server and never to each
other (no peer-to-peer). The hub is a old fashioned,
straight 100 Base-T, non-switching hub.

If I were to change the hub out to 100 Base-T switch,
would I notice any performance improvement?. I have always
been doubtful in the past because all of the data in
always going to and from the Samba server, defeating the
"traffic cop" aspect of a switch. Am I incorrect in
my assumption?

Many thanks,
--Tony
(E-Mail Removed)

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Anthony Ewell wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I maintain a 100 Base-T, Red Hat 8 Samba server with 9
> Windows clients. The Windows clients ONLY exchange data
> and print jobs with the Samba server and never to each
> other (no peer-to-peer). The hub is a old fashioned,
> straight 100 Base-T, non-switching hub.
>
> If I were to change the hub out to 100 Base-T switch,
> would I notice any performance improvement?. I have always
> been doubtful in the past because all of the data in
> always going to and from the Samba server, defeating the
> "traffic cop" aspect of a switch. Am I incorrect in
> my assumption?
>
> Many thanks,
> --Tony
> (E-Mail Removed)
>
Depends how close to saturated the network is with data. If you are
noticing lots of collisions on your hub, then a switch will reduce
those, and increase you overall effective throughput. In general a
switch is just going to be more scalable than your hub.

HTH
Neil
--
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*Neil Horman
*Software Engineer
*Red Hat, Inc., http://people.redhat.com/nhorman
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*http://www.keyserver.net
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"Anthony Ewell" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:bp0dsq$1i6osk$(E-Mail Removed)

> I maintain a 100 Base-T, Red Hat 8 Samba server with 9
> Windows clients. The Windows clients ONLY exchange data
> and print jobs with the Samba server and never to each
> other (no peer-to-peer). The hub is a old fashioned,
> straight 100 Base-T, non-switching hub.
>
> If I were to change the hub out to 100 Base-T switch,
> would I notice any performance improvement?. I have always
> been doubtful in the past because all of the data in
> always going to and from the Samba server, defeating the
> "traffic cop" aspect of a switch. Am I incorrect in
> my assumption?

With the hub, the traffic to the Samba server is also sent to the other
machines connected to the hub, and those data are observable from any of
those machines using ethereal or a similar network interface sniffer. Those
data packets consume bandwidth on each of those machine connections.

With a switch, the data from any arbitrary PC will only be directed towards
the destination machine, and the others will be unable to sniff the data.
This means that network bandwidth will be available on those other machine
connections.

Whether there is a performance improvement or not depends on the amount of
traffic you normally have. If it's a great deal from each of the machines to
the Samba server, then yes, you will probably see a performance increase. If
it's very little, then probably not.


tony

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Anthony Ewell wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I maintain a 100 Base-T, Red Hat 8 Samba server with 9
> Windows clients. The Windows clients ONLY exchange data
> and print jobs with the Samba server and never to each
> other (no peer-to-peer). The hub is a old fashioned,
> straight 100 Base-T, non-switching hub.
>
> If I were to change the hub out to 100 Base-T switch,
> would I notice any performance improvement?. I have always
> been doubtful in the past because all of the data in
> always going to and from the Samba server, defeating the
> "traffic cop" aspect of a switch. Am I incorrect in
> my assumption?

Switches buffer more data than hubs, so latency increases, but eliminate
collisions. Also, switches tend to be full duplex, which means that data
can be going in both directions at the same time.

--

Fundamentalism is fundamentally wrong.

To reply to this message, replace everything to the left of "@" with
james.knott.

With a hub, the sum of all activity on all ports will never exceed (or
even reach) 100Mbps. Further, anything that comes into the hub goes out
all ports.

With a switch, each port can run at up to 100Mbps *in each direction*,
which provides a marketingese 200Mbps. And if one port is talking to
another port at full speed, any third port can talk to any port but the
first two at full speed. Theoretically, a 4-port switch with an uplink
can be passing 200Mbps on all five links, for an aggregate of 1Gbps, but
again, you almost certainly won't ever see anything near that.

The more bandwidth you are using, the greater the improvement. Besides,
nowadays a switch costs so little more than a hub, it's never* worth
buying a hub.

*(Well, it *is* useful for doing network sniffing, but that's about it.)


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Kevin D Quitt USA 91387-4454 96.37% of all statistics are made up
Per the FCA, this address may not be added to any commercial mail list

> If I were to change the hub out to 100 Base-T switch,
> would I notice any performance improvement?

The rule of thumb relies on the collision LED. Do you find it blinks often?
A collision means that two hosts have tried to stuff their packets onto the
LAN at the exact same time.

--
Jem Berkes
http://www.sysdesign.ca/

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, Kevin D Quitt wrote:

> *(Well, it *is* useful for doing network sniffing, but that's about it.)

And that's a darn useful thing to be able to do. True dumb
hubs are getting hard to find these days, so if you need to do
sniffing, you'd better engrave your name on a hub and keep a
close eye on it...

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Grant Edwards grante Yow! But they went to MARS
at around 1953!!
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