Playing over the Internet is fun, but nothing beats the rush of LAN party, live and in person. Just don't let me catch you looking over my shoulder to find me. Over at PC Mechanic, Matt showed you the business end of the CNet 8 and 16 port switches. Before we get into the actual testing phase of the review, I'm going to briefly explain the theory and concepts behind the LAN, packet switching, and the seven layers of the OSI model. Here is the Maximum3D Networking Seminar, free of charge.
Computers talk to each other, usually through a cable.
A switch or hub comes into play when three or more computers need to be connected. The hub or switch acts as a central location, where the data is received, and sent to the destination computer. Although both devices serve basically the same purpose, the method by which a hub and switch handle the data is quite different. A hub receives data from a computer on the network, and sends it out to every other computer plugged into the hub, effectively sharing the bandwidth between all the computers. A switch, on the other hand, intercepts the incoming data, and using a table of hardware addresses, sends the data only to the intended computer.