The advantages of a “switch”
May 2 2007
Everybody knows the cheapest way to speed up a computer is to add more memory. OK, so what’s the cheapest way to speed up your company’s internal network? If you said “switch” to something new, you might have the right idea!
If you are using a network that is more than three to five years old, chances are your network runs off a hub. In the ‘old’ days, computers, printers, servers and other networked devices were typically connected together with a passive device (the hub) that simply repeated everything it heard from one device to all of the other devices. These hubs simply repeat information with no sense of who needs to hear what, sort of like a megaphone.
Imagine that everyone in your office had a megaphone and this was the only way for them to communicate. If more than one person tried to talk at once, it would get pretty loud and nothing would be understood. In addition to the inefficiency of only having one person communicate at a time, everyone in the office would also hear the entire communication. As you can see, this is not a very efficient or secure way to communicate.
A switch, on the other hand, has some intelligence and connects the ‘speaker’ to the intended ‘listener’ for each conversation, much like a telephone system. If Person A wants to communicate with Person B, all A has to do is dial B’s extension and be directly connected. In this manner, multiple conversations can occur at the same time. As you can see, this method offers much improved efficiency and security.
Another advantage of using switches is that they feature a method of communication called full-duplex. This means that each device can ‘talk’ and ‘listen’ at the same time, effectively doubling the throughput on its own. Hubs, and anything connected to them, can only send or receive — not both at once (called half-duplex).
Depending on your current environment, moving to a fully switched environment could have an incredible effect on your systems and network bandwidth, at a reasonable cost — probably less than what your users would spend on coffee for a month. Contact the ProComp Group if you’d like to investigate!