hubs and network performance

wahkim · Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2005 4:47 pm Post subject: hubs and network performance

recently i got a hub to avoid setting up some of the obsolete nics in my router. however, copying data from one machine to another with the hub in place is roughly 1/10th of the performance i had when i had all my machines plugged into my router( 1MB/s vs 10MB/s). is this normal or do i have problems in my network?

adaptr · Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2005 4:53 pm Post subject:

That would depend on a number of factors - how many machines are on this hub, what type of hub is it, what is the quality ?

Generally speaking, a hub will always show lower performance than a switch - which is what is inside your router.
But when you only have one or 2 machines connected to it this will not make any noticable difference.

So it is possible that is is either broken or of very low quality.

Check the collision lights on the hub - when you pull out everything except the one machine and the uplink to the router there shouldn't be any.

Oh and - just to avoid the obvious pitfalls - are you sure this is a 100mbit hub ?
Prove to yourself that it actually connects to the machine and the router at 100mbit.

Some network equipment may give trouble when trying to connect both HD 100Base and FD 100Base nodes to it.

Since a hub is by definition a HD device, if the router doesn't like that it may drop the connection to 10mbit...
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wahkim · Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2005 5:40 pm Post subject:

aha. i just looked up and found out the hub is 10mbit. :p
that'd explain the poor performance