[NTLUG:Discuss] home networking question

[Richard Cobbe]

Lo, on Monday, 20 March, 2000, Bug Hunter did write:

> On Mon, 20 Mar 2000, Richard Cobbe wrote:
> 
> > Lo, on Sunday, 19 March, 2000, Robert Barker did write:
> > 

<SNIP>
 
> > Really?  Hadn't heard about this.  I was planning on moving to a situation
> > not unlike this in the near future.  Do you have pricing info on switches?
> > And how big is the performance difference?
> > 
> > Richard
> 
>   It varies between "wow!" and "ho hum!"
> 
>   If you have a lightly loaded network, switches will not make any
> difference that you can tell.
> 
>   If you have a heavily loaded network -- say more than 10 pc's, then a
> switch will make a difference, IF and ONLY IF, you have tons of traffic
> between two or more pc's.
> 
>   Every Internet network packet is eventually sent to a MAC address on an
> ethernet segment.  This MAC address is hard wired into the card.  It is
> guaranteed unique by the manfuacturer, which gets a unique range of
> addresses from a central source. (Linux can change its MAC address
> via software, so you can spoof as another machine on the network).
> 
<snip description of ethernet's collsion-avoidance protocol>

Thanks for that explanation -- that helps a lot.

Based on this, and Dennis Myhand's contribution that switches run in the
$600-$800 range, for *small* switches, I think I'll stick with a hub.
They're significantly cheaper (say, $30-$50), and I'm trying to network all
of *three* things: 2 PCs and a DSL modem.  Further, this is all in my home,
so I don't expect traffic to be too terribly high.

Thanks again,

Richard