Ethernet Networking for the Small Office and Professional Home Office

4

Creating Network Segments

The basic building block of an Ethernet is a network segment, a group of devices whose message exchanges are controlled by a single interconnection device. Hubs (once also known as repeaters) and switches are interconnection devices that create individual network segments; switches and routers connect segments to make larger networks.

Note: Routing is such a complex topic that it is covered in a chapter of its own (Chapter 6).

Although you can still purchase hubs today, and they are in use in many existing networks, the price of switches has dropped so significantly that there is rarely any reason to install a hub in a new or upgraded network. As you will see, switches provide better performance at about the price ...