>Wow, this was a blast from the past and I just read your message today. Sorry it took so long.
>
>A hub shares the 10 or 100 Mbs pipe amongst all the computers on that network. A switch provides a dedicated 10 or 100 Mbs (or faster as the case may be) for each computer on that network. Switches are faster in networks that are maxing out the median throughput of the network. For cost savings, many times it's best to put a switch on a particularly used group of computers or single computers instead of having everybody on the network hooked into the switch independently. That can get costly if there's a bunch of computers on the network that don't push/pull that much data across it.
>

Close, but not quite. What the switch does is actually interconnect the two ports in a conversation within the hub directly, at whatever the highest data rate supported by both ports may be. If other ports on the same switch also want to have a conversation at the same time, they are interconnected separately; so that each connection is working at the full data rate that the connection allows without having to compete for bandwidth within the switch with other parallel, distinct conversation.

Thw switch pays off least where all conversations require one particular port to be active - the port can only 'talk' to one other port at any instant, so that the other devices waiting to talk to the busy port have to wait until it is not busy. A single server and a large number of clientsis an example of this - and IAC, the switch reduces the overhead from collisions and as a result makes use of available bandwidth better.