What is a hub and how does it work?

A hub is a very broad concept. It is used not only in network terminology. Also, for example, there is the concept of a USB hub. This device, which It is used to connect several different USB devices to one port. But this is not the whole range of possibilities for the use of concentrators of different nature.

In any developing project in the information market segment, sooner or later, the task arises to unite a certain number of disparate data processing devices. This task can be easily solved by a well-built network. To implement this task, there is a sufficiently large number of technologies. Starting to plan the construction of your network, you must immediately determine which devices for aggregating information flows will be used in the process of maintaining the health of network connections. A network hub (hub) is one of these devices.

The main distinguishing feature of the switch that the hub possesses is its peculiarity in the translation of data streams. All ports have the same rights. Therefore, having received an information stream on one of them, it provides its translation to all other active ports. Roughly speaking, in order to understand what a hub is, you need to understand its essence. This repeater is designed for a large number of ports and has a useful auto-segmentation function. Autosegmentation is the process of automatically managing faulty ports (the process of transferring to a faulty port gives rise to another process - declaring a port inactive). In the future, if the fault is eliminated, the port becomes active again.

This is the answer to the question of what a hub is and how it differs from a switch. The properties of the network hub can significantly increase the overall level of reliability and fault tolerance of the network. Moreover, the solution of all the collisions that have arisen and ensuring the general control over the state of the connected channels is directly entrusted to the device itself without the use of additional capacities, both software and hardware.

Hubs can be combined with each other, which allows you to build networks of absolutely any topologies and sizes. They also allow for trunk connections between each other, thus ensuring the implementation of the topology of the "bus". But concentrators have one essential drawback: they strongly depend on the topology of the network in which they are applied, that is, they are not universal. So, for each topology, their kinds of concentrators are produced.

In general, in order to finally understand what a hub is, it is necessary to understand one thing: it allows you to combine the individual devices that are part of the network into one global (or, more precisely, local) workgroup.

We tried to understand in general terms what a hub is and what it's eaten with. Multifunctionality and wide applicability make concentrators widely used in the modern information technology market. With their help, you can solve the most complex tasks of building computer networks and not only them.