Can someone explain me the difference between those three devices?
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You ever get one of those mailers that has no address on it, the postman just delivers one to every house? That’s now a hub works. It just delivers it to everything connected to it and assumes someone out there is interested.
A switch is more like when the postman on your route delivers something addressed to you to your mailbox. He looked at the address and knew it was to you so he only delivered it to you.
A router is the post office. It doesn’t necessarily care precisely where the address is, it just cares about where the next stop is. So if you’re mailing a letter out to some address in Beverly Hills, it doesn’t need to know where the precise street is, it just needs to know where to send it next to get it to that post office, knowing that post office will know what to do with it. If you’re receiving a letter, it knows that it needs to get to your specific mail carrier’s route, and it knows the carrier will know what to do with it.
Sometimes these things are combined. A router/switch combo would be kinda like delivering to you if your mailbox was a PO Box at the post office.
This is a gross oversimplification and definitely doesn’t cover all the ways you can connect these things together, but I’m trying to keep it as ELI5 as possible.
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**Hub:** You walk into a hotel lobby and yell “Hey Bob!” Everyone hears you, but only Bob answers by yelling back so everyone can hear. You then have a yelling conversation while everyone else tries to tune you out. If you yell too loud and too often, other people can’t really hear their own conversations.
**Switch:** You’re in a hotel room and pick up the phone and dial Bob’s room number. You and Bob then have a conversation but no one else in the hotel can hear you even though they’re all in the same hotel and use the same phone system.
**Router:** You call the front desk at The Marriott Hotel and say you’d like to be connected to Bob in The Overlook Hotel. The front desk employee dials up the Overlook Hotel, asks for Bob, then both hotel lobby employees set up a direct connection through each of their switchboards.
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[Edit₂] Silver? And Gold? For me? Thanks! I would like to dedicate these awards to the fine staff at The Marriott and Overlook Hotels…
[Edit₃] Double Gold? I’m not worthy!
[Edit₄] Platinum? Holy crap – I didn’t even know that was a thing! Thank you for all the awards and updoots. I’m going to take my winnings and go have a drink in The Gold Room.
Imagine these devices as an office phone system:
**Hub:** Everyone is in the same room, and the only way to talk just speak out loud so everyone else can hear.
**Switch:** Everyone is in their own office with a phone on their desk that is assigned an extension. You can reach anyone in the building by extension, but you can’t call outside the office.
**Router:** Just like the switch, but the router also has a connection to the global telephone network, so you can call people outside the office as well. The router makes sure that calls to extensions stay inside the office, and calls to phones outside the office go out over the outside line.
Internet arrives at your home through either copper coaxial cable or optical fiber. Hub connects to this and it has some ethernet ports on the back so you can connect your computer to it, it also can broadcast a wifi signal so you can connect to it wirelessly. For most people this is all you need.
If your hub doesnt have enough ethernet ports for your needs you can have more by connecting a network switch to it via an ethernet cable.
If the wifi signal on your hub is crappy you can turn off the wifi on the hub and connect a router to it and use the router to broadcast a wifi signal. You could also leave the wifi on the hub on if you’d like but then the two wifi signals may interfere with each other if they are too close together, so maybe place the router somewhere far away. that way your home’s wifi will have a farther range.
The router also has extra ethernet ports on it so it also acts like a switch.
The hub you usually get with your internet provider is typically really crap and its often suggested to buy your own good quality router.
Imagine you live at an apartment building. The mail for every apartment gets dropped in a big bin and you have to look through it to find what letters are for you. That’s a hub.
The apartment management then installs mailboxes so you open your box and only the mail addressed to you is in there. That’s a switch.
The local post office that receives everyone’s mail and brings it to the building is a router.
I feel like most the answers here are missing info or not explaining it in a simple enough fashion. all 3 are for sending/receiving data.
Hub- broadcasts all data to all connected devices period
Switch – broadcasts data to and from the corresponding connected devices using their MAC address as an identifier
Router – same as a switch but uses IP addresses instead of MAC
these are the most basic differences. If someone who didn’t know a thing about computers or networking asked me Id explain the differences as I have above before id mention anything about segmenting networks and what layer they work on…
Imagine you live in a village where everyone exchanges letters.
You write a letter to a hub. It sends the letter to everyone in your village assuming only the right recipient will actually read it.
You write a letter to a switch. It actually reads the address and sends it to the correct house only.
You send a letter a router when you are sending letters outside of your own village.
If you live in just a small town you probably only have one router which also works as a switch.
In a big town there are lots of switches and one router they all connect to. You don’t have to worry about that though. You only have to send your letters to the closest switch, who will decide if it need to go to a house, another switch, or the router.
You don’t see hubs anymore except in some small rural towns who refuse to upgrade.
Think about it like this…
A router decides which neighborhood to send a package to.
A switch knows all the houses in the neighborhood and sends the package to the house it’s destined for.
A hub delivers the package to all the houses in the neighborhood. Anyone who doesn’t want it just ignores it.
Think of it like sending mail
Hub: I can’t read so I send a copy of the letter to every house
Switch: I can read but only know this neighborhood so I send the letter from one house to the house it needs to go to
Router: I can read and know the addresses in other neighborhoods so I can send the letter from one house to another in any neighborhood I know about
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