What is the Difference Between Routers and Switches (and Hubs)?

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Question: What is the Difference Between Routers and Switches (and Hubs)?

Answer:
Network routers, switches and hubs are all common components of wired Ethernet networks.
Hubs, switches and routers are mostly small plastic or metal box-shaped electronic gadgets. Each is designed to allow computers to connect to it. Each features a number of physical ports on the front or back of the unit that provide the connection points for these computers, a connection for electric power, and a number of LED lights to display device status.

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Ethernet Hub
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Networking Router

To the untrained eye they can all look very similar. These key characteristics are what sets them apart.

Routers Forward Network Data More Intelligently

While hubs, switches and routers all share similar physical appearance, routers differ substantially in their inner workings and contain significantly more logic. Traditional routers are designed to join together multiple local area networks (LANs) with a wide area network (WAN) . Routers serve as intermediate destinations for network traffic. They receive incoming network packets , look inside each packet to identify the source and target network addresses, then forward these packets where needed to ensure the data reaches its final destination. Neither switches nor hubs can do these things.

Routers Help Connect Home Networks to the Internet

Routers for home networks (often called broadband routers) are designed specifically to join the home network to the Internet for the purpose of Internet connection sharing. In contrast, switches (and hubs) are not capable of joining multiple networks or sharing an Internet connection. A network with only switches and hubs must instead designate one computer as the gateway to the Internet, and that device must possess two network adapters for sharing, one for the home facing connection and one for the Internet facing connection. With a router, all home computers connect to the router as peers, and the router handles all such Internet gateway functions.

Routers Are Smarter In Other Ways Too

Additionally, broadband routers contain several features beyond those of traditional routers such as integrated DHCP server and network firewall support. Wireless broadband routers even incorporate a built-in Ethernet switch for supporting wired computer connections (and enabling network expansion via connecting additional switches if needed).

Switches vs. Hubs

Switches are higher-performance alternatives to hubs. Both pass data between devices connected to them, but hubs do so by broadcasting the data to all other connected devices, while switches first determine which device is the intended recipient of the data and then sends it to that one device directly.

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