From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Oct 14 03:17:58 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id DAA19293 for questions-outgoing; Mon, 14 Oct 1996 03:17:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gatekeeper.barcode.co.il (gatekeeper.barcode.co.il [192.116.93.17]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id DAA19278 for ; Mon, 14 Oct 1996 03:17:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from nadav@localhost) by gatekeeper.barcode.co.il (8.7.5/8.6.12) id MAA00908; Mon, 14 Oct 1996 12:15:19 +0200 (IST) Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 12:15:18 +0200 (IST) From: Nadav Eiron To: Song Lining cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: HUB definition??? In-Reply-To: <3261F6F2.4FAB@public.jn.sd.cn> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 14 Oct 1996, Song Lining wrote: > Hi, > > Perhaps this question is too foolish, but who can tell me what is a HUB? > How about the connections between the several ports of a HUB? Do I need > a crossover cable to cascade two hubs? > > Thanks! > ShenXu > Well the question might not be so foolish, but a bit irrelevant to this list. If you're going to do some networking, and you're new to the subject, you should probably get a book on the subject. One of the classic textbooks on the subject is "Computer Networks" by Andrew Tanenbaum, published by Prentice Hall (just saw it has a 3rd edition, I have the 2nd). It's a background textbook about networking in general, and covers almost any networking technology. I used it when I was an undergraduate CS student, and I teach from it nowadys. For ethernet specifics, I have "Advanced Ethernet/802.3 Management and Performance Second Edition" by Bill Hancock, published by Digital Press. I'm sure there are many other great books on the subject. To the point: What's called a hub (and I figure you're talking ethernet hubs) is formally a 10BaseT repeater. It repeats information coming in on any of its ports to all others. When cascading two of those you may need a cross-over cable, but some hubs have switches to do the crossing internally for one of the ports. This swicth might be labeled something like DCE/HUB or DCE/DTE or X/||. Note that there are limitations on how many hubs you may cascade, which cables you may use, etc. Nadav