heatwave

People here explains everything in an easy way.
So, thanks for giving insights!

blackhawk

Well in the most basic sense a router works by looking at IP addresses, and switches use MAC addresses. Gonig a bit deeper routers won't forward broadcasts, and switches will.

Routers are used to break up broadcast domains, all of the computers on the same subnet. Switches are used to break up collision domains, all of the computers that will have a collision on the wire if transmitting at the same time.

heatwave

thanx Erik!

My request please ...
Can we have router vs switch approach

vega55

Hard to do as most routers have switches built in. What are you really asking.

blackhawk

a router from memory connects to a larger domain by one of its ports and routes traffic.
EG: ADSL Router. this device connects to the internet via one of the ports, and people can use the net, and talk to each other like a standard network.

I thought thats what a router was for. switches are just advanced hubs in my reckoning. (i know i'm going to get drilled for this)

heatwave

I'm concern about the device which every node will have the same internet connection speed,
ex. 128kbps connection for 10 nodes
what device will i use to get 128kbps for each of the 10, if it is possible

vega55

Everything you wanted to know about the difference between a router and a switch.

By the way most of the time you get an ADSL modem, not a router. Though sometimes the device does both.

blackhawk

I don't know what exactly it is that you are asking here. As mentioned already most consumer level routers have some number of built in switch ports to enable internet sharing. Of course it is possible to buy the two devices seperately. Which one you will use really depends on what you need the device for.

You can create a totally switched network pretty easily. The only problem is that you wouldn't really be able to access the internet easily. Even then if you are able to access the internet it means that some other device is acting as a router. Think of it as a router is to connect to th internet and switches are for the internal network. Of course that is way over simplified, and over generalized.

blackhawk

It depends, what type of connection are you talking about here, meaning how fast is the connection itself? Also do you want to allow all users a maximum of that bandwidth, or ensure a minimum of that bandwidth?

Anyway what you would probably be best of doing is getting a router that offers Quality of Service(QoS) functionality. That really isn't all that cheap, but it should do what you need. Another solution that is potentially much cheaper is to setup a Smoothwall router. Basically it is a free hardened Linux service setup on any old computer, which can be customized to do what you need. It is very easy to setup, and can do just about everything that some of the more expensive routers do at a fraction of the cost.

Really all a switch does is forward frames if they are on the same subnet, and drops them if not. So a switch really wouldn't help you out at all here. You will also need some way of sharing that single connection amoung the computers, which a router does through NAT.

heatwave

A good explanation!
The LAN (local area network) is one network, the Internet (WAN) is another network. That is why routers are used when seperating the LAN from the WAN.
(You can control access to the Internet and protect the local PCs from Internet threats when a router is used).
Home routers include switches to allow the LAN machines to communicate and also connect to the Internet via the router function.