In the strictest sense a router is not a substitute for a hub.  You are
thinking of a switch.  A hub works by broadcasting all packets to all nodes
on the network.  Nodes listen to the lan for all packets, searching for ones
with their address.  A switch keeps a table of all the node addresses and,
after interrogating each packet, routes it only to the destination node.
There is a lot more that switches do, but this one feature is a significant
improvement over hubs.  This results in much less traffic on the net.  You
would likely see no noteworthy improvement on a 3 node network on which you
are playing games, since each node is likely to be interested in seeing all
game packets all the time anyway.
Tom Turak

-----Original Message-----
From: jimx9 [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2001 11:48 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PCBUILD] router vs hub


Hi,
My brother and I are trying to upgrade our network system.  We have three
computers hooked via a hub.  We mainly use the network for lan gaming.  I
always thought a router was more for sharing a connection amongst the
machines - like a cable modem connection or dsl; a hub was mainly for what
we have set up now.  Which is better for our purpose - and which is faster?
Advantages vs. disadvantages...
Thanks,
James M. Esham

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