What’s the Difference Between a Hub, a Switch, and a Router?

Hubs, switches, and routers are all computer networking devices with varying capabilities. Unfortunately, the terms are often misused.

What’s the difference between a hub, a switch, and a router?

In a word, intelligence.

Hubs, switches, and routers are all devices that let you connect one or more computers to other computers, networked devices, or even other networks. Each has two or more connectors called ports, into which you plug the cables to make the connection.

Varying degrees of magic happen inside each device — and therein lies the difference.

Summary

• Hubs are “dumb” devices that pass on anything received on one connection to all other connections.
• Switches are semi-intelligent devices that learn which devices are on which connection.
• Routers are essentially small computers that perform a variety of intelligent tasks.

Hubs

A hub is the least expensive, least intelligent, and least complicated of the three. Its job is very simple: anything that comes in one port is sent out to the others. That’s it.

If a message comes in destined for computer “A”, that message is sent out to all the other ports, regardless of which computer “A” is.

When computer “A” responds, its response also goes out to every other port on the hub.