Re: collision on hub

"Ian Northeast" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Julian Hales wrote:
> >
> > HI
> >
> > added another pc, on the 8 port hub when i transfer files over from pc's
to
> > the new one the orange collision led lights up, not sure what that
means.
>
> It means you're getting collisions Collisions occur when two machines
> simultaneously test the network to see if it is busy, find it is not, so
> send their packets. As they both do it at the same time they then detect
> that there is other traffic on the network so they both back off and try
> again. The retry interval should be random, to minimise the chance of a
> second collision. It's inefficient but does not cause any error.
> Collisions can happen with a single connection, as both machines may try
> to send a packet to each other at the same time.
>
> > I am downloading off the web ok thru my hub>router>broadband but wanted
> > another machine for sone lan games is this gonna be a problem?
>
> Probably not, collisions are normal when using a hub. This is because
> hubs are dumb devices which just reflect all inputs onto all outputs,
> you can only have one packet going over a hub at a time. The more
> machines you put on a hub the more collisions you will get.
>
> It's a problem if things get slow because there are too many collisions.
> If your network is not as fast as you think it should be, and your games
> get sluggish (it will mainly affect them), and the collision light is on
> a lot, consider upgrading to a switch. Switches are more intelligent and
> send packets only to the ports they are intended for, and are
> bidirectional, so packets can go A>B and B>A simultaneously. Collisions
> should be extremely rare on a switch. This machine has been up 2 months,
> has transferred 48 million packets and has had no collisions. And they
> are not very expensive nowadays. My no-name 16 port one from Scan was
> 64UKP. It works fine. 8 port ones can be had quite a bit cheaper.
>
> Regards, Ian

thanks, makes sense. 3 of the router ports are straight to nics, the other
goes to the hub, which leaves 7 ports. im getting a red led partition light
now.

I presumed it was due to both accessing at the same time.





Julian Hales