Communication

Difference between Router, Switch, and Hub

Article on networking devices like Hub, Switch, and Router. Learn the differences between them.

In networking terminology, you might had come across the terms hubs, switches, routers, bridges, modems etc which are the basic building blocks for the network to be built.

All these networking devices hubs, switches and routers perform similar functionality as they pass along data traffic through connectors called ports.

In the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) model, the software to handle the transmission media are defined at layers 1 and 2 — the physical layer and the data link layer.

Let’s explore the fundamental roles of these networking devices which help us to understand the differences among them.

what is a Hub?

Hub is a layer 1 network hardware device for connecting multiple Ethernet devices. It has multiple input and output ports.

When a packet enters at any one of the ports, it is copied to every other port except for the port of entry which means all the segments of LAN can view the packet regardless of where the data is actually destined to be.

Hub is not intelligent enough to identify to which port the packet must be sent to.

It can create a lot of traffic on the network as the packets are placed on each and every port apart from the intended destination.

what is a Switch?

A Switch is comparatively intelligent than a hub. As a hub, the switch also serves as a connection point for multiple devices over network and operates at Layer 2 (datalink Layer).

The Switch can perform an error check before forwarding the data packets which makes it more efficient as it passes the error-free data to the appropriate port only as it makes note of the mac-addresses of the computers connected to it in the table.

If the destination address is not in the table, the switch sends the data to all the connected computers.

What is a Router?

A router is the most intelligent of the three hardware devices.

A router is a networking device that forwards data packets between computer networks and operates at Layer 3 as per the OSI model.

It usually connects at least two networks together, such as two LANs, two WANs, or a LAN and its ISP network.

Routers can calculate the efficient route for sending data and communicate with each other by protocols.

Differences

Attributes	Hub	Switch	Router
Layer Architecture	Physical Layer	Data Link Layer	Network Layer
Functionality	Connects two or more Ethernet devices	Connect two or more LAN devices	Can connect devices or a LAN and WAN
Data Transmission Form	Sends data in the form of electric signals or bits	Sends data in the form of frames or packets	Sends data in the form of packets
Filter Operation	Does not perform filtering	Performs error check filtering on the packets before forwarding them	Most Expensive and intelligent.
Intellingence and Cost Variance	Least Expensive and complicated. No Intelligence	More Expensive and Intelligent	Most Expensive and intelligent. Most Complicated
Data Transmission Mode	Half Duplex	Half /Full Duplex	Full Duplex
Address used for Data Transmission	Does not store any address of a node in network	MAC Address	IP Address
Speed	10 Mbps	10/100Mbps, 1 gbps	1- 100 mbps wireless, 100mbps – 1gbps Wired
Ports	4/12 ports	multi-port, usually between 4 and 48	2/4/5/8 ports
Used in(LAN, MAN, WAN)	LAN	LAN	LAN, MAN, WAN
Device Type	Broadcast Device	Multicast Device	Routing Device