Networking devices:

Repeater or Hub:

  • Connects two segments of your network cable.
  • Retimes and regenerates the signals to proper amplitudes and sends them to the other segments.
  • In ethernet topology, a hub is used as a repeater.
  • Require a small amount of time to regenerate the signal. This can cause a propagation delay which can affect network communication when there are several repeaters in a row.
  • Work at the physical layer of the OSI network model
  • It communicate by broadcasting

SWITCH:

  • Advanced version over a Hub.
  • The main benefit of switch is Unicast in short data packets are transmitted only to the target computer instead of all(Broadcasting).
  • Maintains a table called MIT(Mac Information Table.) which is generated as soon as we turn on the switch. MIT contains the port no, IP address and MAC(Media Access Control) address or Physical(It is an address burnt in the NIC by the manufacturer have 48 bits).
  • Work at the data link layer of the OSI network model

ROUTER:

  • Router is a device connects two different networks.
  • Routing occurs at the network layer of the OSI model.
  • They can connect networks with different architectures such as Token Ring and Ethernet.
    Although they can transform information at the data link level, routers cannot transform information from one data format such as TCP/IP to another such as IPX/SPX.
  • Routers do not send broadcast packets or corrupted packets. If the routing table does not
    indicate the proper address of a packet, the packet is discarded.

    Router creates the routing table to determine the best path