What is a hub and how does it work?

A hub is a very broad concept. It is used not only in network terminology. Also, for example, there is the concept of a USB hub. This device, which

It is used to connect several different USB devices to one port. But this is not the whole range of possibilities for using concentrators of different nature.

In any developing project in the informationthe market segment sooner or later there is a task to combine a certain number of disparate data processing devices. This task can be easily solved by a well-built network. To implement this task, there is a fairly large number of technologies. Having started planning the construction of your network, you should immediately determine which devices for aggregating information flows will be used in the process of maintaining the health of network connections. A network hub (hub) is one of these devices.

The main distinguishing feature of the switch,which has a hub - this is its feature of the translation of data streams. All ports have the same rights. Therefore, having received an information stream on one of them, it provides its translation to all other active ports. Roughly speaking, in order to understand what a hub is, you need to understand its essence. This repeater is designed for a large number of ports and has a useful auto-segmentation function. Autosegmentation is the process of automatically managing faulty ports (the process of transferring to a faulty port gives rise to another process - declaring a port inactive). In the future, if the fault is eliminated, the port becomes active again.

This is the answer to the question of what a hub is andthan it differs from the switch. The properties of the network hub allow to significantly increase the overall level of reliability and fault tolerance of the network. Moreover, the decision of all the collisions that have arisen and the provision of general control over the status of the connected channels is directly entrusted to the device itself without the use of additional capacities, both software and hardware.

Hubs can be combined with each other, thatallows you to build networks of absolutely any topologies and sizes. They also allow for trunk connections between each other, thus ensuring the implementation of the bus topology. But concentrators have one essential drawback: they strongly depend on the topology of the network, in which they are applied, that is, they are not universal. So, for each topology, their kinds of concentrators are produced.

In general, to finally understand thatsuch a hub, you need to understand one thing: it allows you to merge separate devices that are part of the network into one global (or more precisely, local) workgroup.

We tried to understand in general terms whatsuch a hub and "with what it is eaten." Multifunctionality and wide applicability make concentrators widely used in the modern information technology market. With their help, you can solve the most complex tasks of building computer networks and not only them.