On 5 Jul 1999, Gary L. Hennigan wrote:
> I'm going to be setting up a small 100Mb home network soon and I'd Why 100Mb? 10 is fast enough for most uses and is actually faster than most machines can push bits out the interface. > I gather I need a HUB or a switch for anything more than two hosts? > Which one? I believe I understand the difference. A hub acts as a > simple amplifier. Any signal it receives on one of it's ports is > amplified and sent to all it's other ports. A switch, if my > understanding is correct, adds some smarts to the process and only > sends the signals to relevant ports. So if machine A sends a packet to That's basically it. I would recommend an inexpensive 10BaseT hub. This will get you started with a network and you'll be able to leanr more about configuring and using networked machines. Most of the NIC cards you might be interested in are 10/100 these days. (I recommend Kingston KNE100 cards, but the Intel Pro100+ cards may be even better.) So, you will be able to upgrade your network to 100BaseTX by just changing the hub to a 100Mb hub or switch. At that point I would recommend going with a switch. Prices should have dropped even more by that time too.
