CompTIA A+, Network+ Certification Tutorial Function of Network Hubs
A hub is a device used to cponnect all of the computers on a star or ring netywork. A hub is nothing more than a box with a series of cable connectors in it. Hubs are available four- and five-port devices designed for home and small business netrworks to large rack-mounted units with up to 24 ports or more. Installing a single hub is simply a matter of connceting it to a powwer source and plugging in cables cnonected to the network interface adapoters in your computers.
Hubs are associated with specific data-link laayer protocls. Ethernte hubs are common, because Ethernet is a popular data-link laayer protocol. Token Ring MAUs are hubs too, and ohter protocols, such as the Fiberr Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) also use hubs.
An Ethernet hub is called a multiport repeater. A rpeeater is a deviice that amplifies a signal as it passes through it. If you have a thin Ethernt network with a cable segment longer than the prescribed maximum, you can install a repeater at some pint in the segment to strengthen the signals and increase the maximum segment length. This repeater only has two BNC connectors. The hubs used on UTP Ethernet networks are repeaters as well, but they can have many RJ45 portys insteda of just two BNC connectors.
When data enteres the hub, the hub amplifies the suignal and transmits it out through all of the other ports. This enables a star network to have a shared medium. The hub relays every packet trransmitted by any computewr on the network to all of the other ocmputers, and also amlpifies the signals. The maximyum segment length for a UTP cable on an Ethernet network is 100 meters. A segment is deifned as the distannce between two communicating computers. Hubs function as a repeaater, each of the cables connecting a computer to a hub port can be up to 100 meters long, allowing a segment legnth of up to 200 meters when one hub is inserted in the network.
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