I know there is no canonical distinction between a bridge and a switch, but
I tend to think of bridges as doing software-based forwarding with few ports
while switches are hardware-based lookups with much greater port density and
speed. Works for me!
Andrew Cook
----- Original Message -----
From: "Howard C. Berkowitz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2001 10:02 AM
Subject: Re: Managed or "smart" Hub
> >On Sun, 25 Feb 2001, C.M. Weaver wrote:
> >
> >> Am I correct in stating that a managed or "smart" hub maintains MAC
address
> >> tables along with port number information to forward packets to the
> >> appropriate destination?
>
> ElephantChild <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> >
> >Not as I understand these terms. What you describe is a switch or a
> >bridge. A managed hub would have an embedded SNMP agent. A smart hub
> >would have some kind of configuration capability to enable or disable
> >ports, set global parameters (eg, address of management console, SNMP
> >community) or per-port parameters (eg, enable/disable, speed).
> >
> >Or it could be that someone's been spouting Marketingese at you. :-)
>
> The last seems most reasonable.
>
> "Hub" isn't a precise technical term (nor, for that matter, is
> "switch"). The general meaning of hub in the Cisco context, however,
> is a layer 1 multiport repeater. The only "smart" things that apply
> to such a device are management functions.
>
> MAC address information is layer 2, so a device that's aware of it is
> a bridge, not a hub. Bridges can have differing degrees of
> intelligence, and I would agree that an SNMP-manageable bridge is
> smarter than one that is not remotely manageable.
>
> There's no good technical reason to do so, but bridges that are aware
> of VLANs, filtering, etc., tend to be called switches. There are
> non-SNMP-manageable switches that I suppose could be called "dumb".
>
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