TYAN S1837 User Manual page 49

Shared hubs
In a shared network environment, computers are connected to hubs called
repeaters. All ports of the repeater hub share a fixed amount of bandwidth, or
data capacity. On a 100 Mbps shared hub, all nodes on the hub must share the
100 Mbps of bandwidth. As stations are added to the hub, the effective band-
width available to any individual station gets smaller. Shared hubs do not
support full duplex.
Think of a shared repeater hub as a single-lane highway that everyone shares.
As the number of vehicles on the highway increases, the traffic becomes
congested and transit time increases for individual cars.
On a shared hub all nodes must operate at the same speed, either 10 Mbps or
100 Mbps. Fast Ethernet repeaters provide 100 Mbps of available bandwidth,
ten times more than what's available with a 10BASE-T repeater.
Repeaters use a well-established, uncomplicated design, making them highly
cost effective for connecting PCs within a workgroup. These are the most
common type of Ethernet hubs in the installed base.
Switching hubs
In a switched network environment, each port gets a fixed, dedicated amount
of bandwidth. In the highway scenario, each car has its own lane on a multi-
lane highway and there is no sharing.
In a switched environment, data is sent only to the port that leads to the
proper destination station. Network bandwidth is not shared among all
stations, and each new station added to the hub gets access to the full
bandwidth of the network.
If a new user is added to a 100 Mbps switching hub, the new station receives
its own dedicated 100 Mbps link and doesn't impact the 100 Mbps bandwidth
of another station. Switching hubs can effectively increase the overall band-
width available on the network, significantly improving performance. Switching
hubs can also support full duplex.
For more information on Fast Ethernet, visit the Network Products website
(http:// www.intel.com/network).
S1837 Thunderbolt
49