Home Networking on Windows XP

[Chubtoad]

In the originaly point of this post, a hub is all that is needed because all you're doing is trasnferring very little data, especially a dial-up modem. a 10BaseT hub is plenty for a cable modem also, but as I said, if you transfer ANYTHING between the computers often then yeah hubs, especially cheap 10BaseT ones suck. But if you only have 2 computers a 100BaseT Hub is really the same as a switch, and I've found switches are usually 40% more expensive then their hub counter-parts, which makes sense because the performance and actual hardware is a lot more then a hub.

For those of you who might not know, a Hub is comparable to an extension cord, where a Switch would be totally seperate power stations. a Switch directs traffic to individual computes while a hub broadcasts all information to all computers and the computer that wants it will use it and the others just trash it. if you had a 10 port 100baseT hub, and all ten computers were transferring huge files, each computer would only be getting a max of 10mbps(one direction, if you were sending both ways this would be limited to 5mbps up and 5mbps down), where as on a 100BaseSwitch in the same situation each computer would get 100mbps both ways (upload 100mbps AND downloadmbps)

personally the other computer I have is a POS and I use it for storage, but I don't transfer OFTEN and I store movies so I can watch them over the network through my $15 10baseT HUb