Solved: Real realibility of Hub vs switch questions

news2010a · ‎06-04-2007

I have plans to replace a hub with a switch 3750 with redundant power supply.

According to owners of those devicews connected to the hubs, servers connected to such hub do not have option for NIC teaming and/or do not have NIC slots available.

That said, given a single hub and single switch, is there any physical reason to replace a hub with a switch 3750? Some folks are bringing up that the hub is as reliable as a switch (besides the power supply).

In addition, as we know they brought up that the hub allows monitoring (sniffer, IDS/IPS) from any port. In the switch, they brought up that SPAN(port mirroring) could cause packet loss in the process. In your experience have you seen packets being lost due to SPAN configuration?

If

ankbhasi · ‎06-04-2007

Hi Friend,

I my experience you will not see any packet loss due to SPAN configuration. No doubt things are easy to handle on HUB because it does not need any configuration but remember if you compare performance between hub and switches, switches are far far better and especially when it comes to 3750 switch it is one of the best in its segment.

Switch will give you lot of advance features like vlan segmentation, trunk, etherchannel, QOS, ACLs etc etc. and packets are switches in hardware.

Also not forgetting the basic difference between hub and switch hub creates 1 big broadcast domain and collision domain and switch breaks collision domain.

3750 switch being l3 switch will also give you routing functionality.

HTH

Ankur

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View solution in original post

ankbhasi · ‎06-04-2007

Hi Friend,

I my experience you will not see any packet loss due to SPAN configuration. No doubt things are easy to handle on HUB because it does not need any configuration but remember if you compare performance between hub and switches, switches are far far better and especially when it comes to 3750 switch it is one of the best in its segment.

Switch will give you lot of advance features like vlan segmentation, trunk, etherchannel, QOS, ACLs etc etc. and packets are switches in hardware.

Also not forgetting the basic difference between hub and switch hub creates 1 big broadcast domain and collision domain and switch breaks collision domain.

3750 switch being l3 switch will also give you routing functionality.

HTH

Ankur

*Pls rate all helpfull post

news2010a · ‎06-04-2007

OK, in this case, l3, QoS, ACLs, etc is not necessary, they really just need layer 2 capabilities.

Thanks.

mark.j.hodge · ‎06-05-2007

In that case a 3750 may be overkill, take a look at the 2960 series devices as they may be more cost effective.

Replacing a Hub with a switch if servers are connected is deffinately the way to go, as it breaks up the collision domains. i.e. ClientPC-A can transfer at line speed with Server-X at the same time ClientPC-B communicates with Server-Y. If the servers have Gb NICs then you can improve performance even more.

The additional management capabilities can help you out, preventing broadcast storms, and port security preventing unauthorised access to the LAN etc...

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