What is a Hub?
A hub is defined as a network device that connects multiple devices coming from different branches into a single network. Hub has many ports. It works at the physical layer of the OSI model. Hub is also known as a multiport repeater. The data packets that are received at the hub are directly forwarded to all the connected devices as the hub cannot filter data. Hub makes use of shared bandwidth. Hub is not an intelligent device as compared to the repeater. Hubs do not have the feature of switching. It is majorly used in star topology for connecting multiple sub-stations together.
Hub works as a Multiport Repeater to form a hierarchical network
Types of Hub
The three types of network hub are as follow:
- Active Hub: Active Hub is defined as a type of hub that requires an external power supply. Before broadcasting the received signal to all connected devices it amplifies and regenerates it.
- Passive Hub: Passive Hub is defined as a type of hub that does not require any external power supply. It only amplifies the received signals and broadcast them to all the devices connected to the network.
- Intelligent Hub: An intelligent hub is defined as a type of hub that provides the administrators with the provision to monitor the network traffic, manage network traffic, configure network settings, and port mirroring.
For Advantages and Disadvantages of Hub, refer to Advantages and Disadvantages.
Difference Between Hub and Repeater
A hub is defined as a network device that connects multiple devices coming from different branches into a single network whereas The repeater is defined as a device that is used to amplify and retransmit the signals of incoming packets to the other side of the segments. Let’s discuss them in detail in this article.